Something Out of Nothing
by tinyhuman02
Summary: Set at the end of 7x08; She's a hopeless romantic and he just loves to screw. April and Alex bicker constantly. Oddly enough, it's the only way they can get along. But life is full of surprises, ones that neither of them expected to experience together. AK2.
1. Bruised Egos

**Hey, folks! As someone who pretty much has to rely on fics for the little AK2 ship that exists, this is my interpretation of how the ending of 7x08 could have gone if Alex was able to apologize to April for the on-call room incident and what develops after that. No shipper wars, please :)**

**Disclaimer: Don't own Grey's or its characters**

* * *

_"What the hell were you thinking? She's a virgin. Why would you do that?"_

That was the problem. Alex Karev hadn't been thinking clearly at all when he attempted to have sex with virginal April Kepner in an on-call room. His day – more like his entire weekend – had been crappy. Family issues at home in Iowa, a new jackass peds attending who was nothing like Arizona Robbins and a hangover that had been bugging him since morning. But there was one glimmer of light that had made him feel good, at least for a moment.

He couldn't quite understand why the typically annoying and perky doctor defended him after Robert Stark stole his idea to use a ping pong ball to preserve an infant girl's liver. While he didn't hate her for doing so – it was _his_ idea after all and that measly grump tried to take credit for it – she was usually the victim of his harsh jokes about her. The whole virgin background only gave him another reason to constantly tease her. Maybe she shared a common dislike for Stark. Whatever.

In retrospect, Alex regretted taking out his anger on April for a variety of reasons. She didn't have a clue what was happening with his personal life and likely assumed she had done something wrong when he blew up at her. And she had been siding with him the entire day, so he just looked like an even bigger douche after yelling at her when she didn't deserve it. He was hoping to apologize to her when he arrived at Cristina Yang and Owen Hunt's housewarming party, but he never got the chance.

The first punch from Jackson Avery was deserved. He was willing to take one for his douchey behavior towards April, but he hadn't expected the pretty boy to continue beating him up. His back ached from practically being thrown onto a coffee table and he suffered cuts above his left eyebrow and on his lower lip from the hits he endured from his coworker. Oh, and his shirt was torn in the front. Alex kept a mental memo to himself to remind that asswipe he owed him a new one. He freaking loved that shirt too.

Now he was outside of the firehouse being scolded by Meredith Grey, but at least he trusted her enough to confess where he had been all along instead of Las Vegas for the weekend. Iowa was the home of his past demons, a place he tried to avoid visiting as much as possible. An abusive father, a schizophrenic mother and his younger brother nearly killed their 16-year old sister prior to being diagnosed schizophrenic too. He hadn't seen Amber Karev since she was about ten years old, but somebody had to be there to ensure she survived. There weren't any other reliable family members to handle the situation except for him. He hightailed it out of his home state as quickly as he could because he couldn't stand to be there.

Alex felt like an ass. Actually, he _was_ an ass in his mind.

"So, what now?" Meredith asked inquisitively. "Will you at least check up on your family, see how they're doing?"

"I send money and my mom's meds every month. Maybe I look like a guy who doesn't give a crap, but I do. It's just my life at home was so freaking messed up that I do my best to ignore it," he muttered, placing a small towel full of ice against his lower lip. "I know that makes me an ass, but I can't focus on becoming a surgeon and worrying about everything that's happening in Iowa at the same time. It's damn near impossible."

Meredith knew a thing or two about living in an unstable home, though she considered him to be the winner of broken households. Alex hardly shared deeply personal information about his life to anyone. None of his friends were aware of the fact that he had siblings until Aaron Karev randomly showed up in Seattle earlier that year. He wasn't one to easily tear down his guard and open up about his crappy childhood, but his guilt forced him to tell her the truth, which was probably for the better.

Their conversation was interrupted by April, who stepped out of the firehouse tightly clutching her purse. She appeared to still be shaken up by what had happened in the living room minutes earlier, briefly glancing at the twosome staring back at her before she turned and walked the opposite direction.

Meredith nudged Alex's side with her elbow, drawing a scowl from him. He was beat up enough. The smallest physical contact made him wince. "Go apologize to her," she advised and returned to the party to give them privacy.

He sighed, grimacing as he shifted awkwardly to stand upright. "Kepner, wait a minute," he called out, too lazy to chase after her. Gingerly walking towards the brunette, he stopped in front of her. "Listen, uhh… I was gonna apologize for the on-call room thing, but Avery kind of jumped me in there."

"I-I I just w-wanted to let you know that I d-didn't ask Jackson to beat you up," April stammered, her eyes filling up with tears. She stared at the ground as she choked back a sob. "I'm- I'm sorry."

"What the hell are you apologizing for? This was all me," Alex muttered, rolling his eyes. He wondered why chicks like Kepner had to be so freaking sensitive over anything that wasn't their fault to begin with. "What happened in the on-call room had nothing to do with you. I had a bunch of crap on my mind and I did a stupid thing. You showed up at the wrong time, that's all."

Slowly nodding her head, she swiftly dried her eyes with the sleeve of her sweater. "Okay," April quietly responded and gazed up at him. "Umm… are you staying here or… do you want a ride home?"

The party was already a drag after getting his ass kicked. Going back only for their peers to throw snarky comments about his bruised face was pointless. He did take a taxi to the firehouse, so he could either wait outside for Meredith or head back early with the Virgin Mary.

"Yeah, let's go," he agreed, following his coworker to her car.

The drive home was unsurprisingly awkward. If it weren't for the radio faintly playing Alicia Keys in the car, the silence would have been unbearable for either of them. April's hands were glued to the steering wheel as she stared straight ahead without ever looking at Alex, who continued to ice his face. He rested his head against the window, shutting his eyes to calm himself until they arrived at the frat house.

April parked the car in front of the house, but not without purposefully stepping on the brake pedal causing Alex to lunge forward in his seat and waking him up in an instant. If he hadn't been wearing his seatbelt, his face would have become best friends with the windshield.

"We're home," she sarcastically chirped.

"Dude…" he grumbled, removing his seatbelt as she got out of the car. Following her into Meredith's house, he headed for the kitchen to dump whatever ice was left in his towel. "Hey, you think you could check the cut on my brow? Like if I need stitches or whatever?"

Instead of receiving a response from his roommate, Alex heard her scurry up the stairs and enter her bedroom, slamming the door behind her. She was obviously still pissed at him regardless of the apology, but he wasn't going to lose sleep over it.

It was just _Kepner_ for crying out loud.

* * *

Lying face down on her bed, April desperately wanted to erase the entire day from her memory. She had endured numerous humiliating moments in her lifetime, but this one would be difficult to live down for a while. Lexie Grey and Jackson had warned her not to go _there_ with Alex because he was most definitely not the type of man she should be losing her virginity to. And he was obnoxious and rude to her almost all of the time. She was the goody two shoes who barely had anything in common with him. Her crush on him didn't make much sense to anybody.

But deep inside, she believed there was a good person inside of that stubborn mule. If only everyone else would take the time to notice that, then maybe they would understand, she thought.

However, April felt more idiotic than ever after she had convinced herself that Alex had mutual feelings for her. The kiss in the on-call room immediately drew her in. She had always expected her first sexual experience to happen in a much nicer – and cleaner – bedroom, but she couldn't help herself. He wanted to have sex with her!

Or at least that was what she assumed. It seemed he simply needed sex from somebody to temporarily forget about the crap that was internally bothering him. He didn't actually want _her_. Thinking about that stung. It was senior year of high school all over again.

The guy's name was Vince Davis, one of the popular athletes in her class. He needed a tutor for Physics and of course, the science nerd in her volunteered. Although not as blunt and rude like Alex, they had gotten along and he even asked her out to prom to show his gratitude for helping him pass his class. She was a naïve 18-year old who hardly dated in high school because she was awkward and an "in betweener" – not a part of the popular crowd, but not a loner either. She had her group of friends, though none of the boys she was friends with were anything like Vince.

But the joke was on her, simply a pawn in his plans to make an ex-girlfriend jealous when they arrived at prom. He saw her as a safe choice that he could easily take advantage of. Once the football player's plan successfully worked and he won back the girl, she was left behind to celebrate the night with her friends – and their dates, making her the pathetic loner who thought she had a legit chance with Mr. Popular.

And they also warned her that it likely wouldn't be the fairy tale date she envisioned in her head.

Why were her friends always right about these things?

None of April's sisters had problems with the opposite sex. Libby married her college sweetheart and they already had two children with a third one on the way. Kimmie was engaged and Alice… well, she had a carousel of boyfriends, but at least she was dating people. The only doctor in the Kepner family? She was surrounded by attractive men every day, yet she had trouble speaking normally to most of them.

A knock on the door forced her to sit up on her bed. Quickly wiping away the tears escaping her eyes, she cleared her throat and sighed. "Come in."

_Anybody but Alex. Anybody but Alex._

Fortunately, it was only Jackson when the door opened. He walked into April's bedroom, closing the door behind him. "You left. I was going to check on you after I iced my hand, but you were gone," he softly said and sat down across from her on the bed.

"Umm… there was no reason for me to stay. I shouldn't have showed up in the first place," she tearfully replied. "I didn't ask you to punch Alex. You're lucky the Chief wasn't there to see that. You could've gotten in trouble."

Her best friend dismissively shook his head. "It happened outside of the hospital, so he wouldn't be able to do anything about that if he had been there. And Karev deserved it, April. He had no right doing what he did to you. The guy's a douche. I'd hit him again if Hunt let me."

She picked up his right hand and examined the minor cuts on his knuckles. It was still swollen despite icing it earlier. "Well, he apologized – sort of. I mean, for a guy like him to at least say he's sorry-"

"Don't defend what he did," Jackson interrupted, furrowing his eyebrows at her. "It doesn't matter if he's sorry. He shouldn't have tried sleeping with you in the first place."

"But… I umm, I kind of wanted to," April murmured, dropping her head to avoid eye contact with him. "I thought maybe he… for once, I really wish I could be right, that a guy I have zero chance with actually likes me."

He sympathized for her because she wasn't a hot commodity at Mercy West either. It was her constant perkiness and high strung attitude that turned a lot of men off, but she had always been a caring friend to him, so he felt it was his duty to protect her. And after Charles Percy and Reed Adamson were murdered earlier that year by Gary Clark, they really only had each other, at least from a Mercy West perspective.

"Listen, there will be someone for you. Who knows? Maybe it'll take time to meet him, but it'll happen," Jackson assured April and leaned in for a hug, soothingly rubbing her back. He let out a chuckle. "C'mon, you had to have at least felt some satisfaction seeing Karev get his ass kicked."

Playfully shoving him away from her, she softly laughed. "Fine. A little," the brunette doctor admitted, rolling her eyes. "Whatever. I'm going to get ready for bed before everybody's home."

"Seriously? You're going to bed _now_?" he skeptically asked. "We have the night shift tomorrow. If you sleep now, you won't be able to sleep throughout the day and you'll be snoozing at work instead."

April grimaced, slapping her hand against her forehead. "I forgot. Tomorrow's gonna suck. Facing everybody again after what happened with Alex today – not an ideal situation."

"Nah, don't worry about it. If anything, they'll probably remember me bruising up his face than the on-call room incident," the pretty boy insisted, slowly opening and closing his right hand and wincing. "Hopefully, I can operate."

"You couldn't have just kicked him in the nuts? It would've saved you damage to your hand," she teased.

Jackson sheepishly grinned at his friend. "Well, I had some alcohol in my system before you arrived. I was worried about you, then Karev showed up and I lost my cool. I wasn't having a very good day either." He stood up, tugging April's wrist. "Let's go downstairs. Find a movie to watch or something."

"I'm not ready to show my face to anybody. You have no idea how embarrassing today was for me, Jackson."

"Like I said, don't worry about it," he reassured her and forced her to stand up. "By tomorrow, nobody will remember it."

* * *

_"Alex Karev is not the boy you want to take your maiden voyage with."_

Even a drunk Miranda Bailey was aware of what happened in the on-call room. One thing April learned quickly about working at Seattle Grace Mercy West was that gossip spread fast like the common cold. And even in her inebriated state, her superior managed to offer harmless, yet uncomfortable sex advice.

But on the plus side, Bailey's advice to use soap and water with acetone to separate her super glued patients worked. At least something helpful came out of that bizarre encounter with the general surgeon.

It was a long, slow night at work. As much as April wanted to pass out on her bed at 7 AM, she needed to take a shower. That distinct hospital smell filled Meredith's car on the way home and it wasn't going away until she washed it out of her hair. Thankfully, she had called first dibs on the shower, but she literally sprinted into the house just to be on the safe side. A nice, warm and quiet shower was more relaxing than ever and she had the bathroom all to herself.

For about five minutes.

Alex casually barged into the bathroom, swinging the door open and startling April when the doorknob banged against the wall. He snickered after she screamed at the sight of him inside.

"Alex!" she shrieked. Although the glass doors of the shower weren't completely transparent, she felt compelled to cover herself as much as possible. "Get out! I'm trying to take a shower!"

"So, it's okay for you to occupy the bathroom when other people are showering?" he amusingly asked, walking towards the sink. "You need to freaking relax. We're all adults here. Besides, I've seen worse boobs."

April's eyes widened as she glanced down at her chest. "What's wrong with my boobs?" she panicked. "Do you stare at my boobs when I'm not looking?"

"I stare at all boobs," he muttered while he brushed his teeth.

"Well, these boobs are not for you to stare at. You lost that privilege," she scolded him, turning off the shower. She partially slid the door open to reach for her towel, but it dropped onto the floor when she tried to grab it. Now, her body was left almost fully exposed for Alex to see. "Umm… can you get my towel when you're finished?"

He peered down at the purple towel on the floor and chuckled. "Why can't you get it yourself?"

"Because I… do something nice for me just this once, okay? Please?" Opening the door wider for her to reach down for her towel meant he would see more of her naked body and she refused to let him stare at her. Instead of helping her, Alex walked over to the toilet. "What are you doing now? You're seriously testing my patience."

"Dude, I gotta hose out the tank. Give me a second," he retorted.

April groaned as the sound of Alex peeing echoed in the bathroom. "You're doing this on purpose," she irritably replied. His playful whistling annoyed her even more. She decided to stop waiting for him and swiftly reached for her towel, successfully grabbing it and wrapping it around her body. "Thanks for the help."

"Whatever," Alex nonchalantly answered and flushed the toilet. He returned to the sink to wash his hands as his grumpy roommate stepped out of the shower. "See? And I didn't even peek this time."

"Okay, on a serious note," she stood beside him and whispered, "What's wrong with my boobs?"

"Honestly?" Drying his hands on another towel, he smirked at her. "Nothing. They're… you. They're perky."

April hesitated to respond, opening her mouth and quickly closing it afterwards. "O-okay, umm… can you leave now?" she bashfully questioned and nervously bit down on her lower lip.

Alex rolled his eyes as he headed towards the door. "I'm telling you, Kepner. You need to lose the uptight thing or you'll never get laid," he advised and left her alone in the bathroom.

Folding her arms tightly against her chest, she rushed out of the bathroom and into her bedroom. She leaned back against her door and sighed. "Stop thinking about him, you idiot," she scolded herself. "Just because he complimented your boobs it doesn't mean anything. He's _Karev_ for crying out loud."

* * *

**Who doesn't love their banters? As always, feel free to leave a review :)**


	2. Seeing Red

**Thank you for the reviews! Whether you like Alex or April or both, I hope you'll continue to read this story :)**

**Enjoy!**

* * *

April had grown used to relatives mistaking her for one of her sisters. It was usually their aging grandparents who continuously mixed them up, despite correcting them a minute before making the same error again. She couldn't blame them too much. Aside from poor memory, the Kepner girls all shared similar features – brunette, green eyes, ghost white skin. Her sisters were all slightly taller than her, but she understood how people could mismatch names with their faces.

What she couldn't understand was how many nurses constantly confused her with her best friend, Reed. She not only found it aggravating but it was also a painful reminder that her Mercy West sister was dead. And thinking about Reed forced her to remember the moment she tripped over her lifeless body and landed in a puddle of her blood. She occasionally had nightmares about it, though she kept that to herself.

And the same boneheaded nurses were beginning to call her Lexie as well. If they couldn't get her name right now, they probably never would, so the perky resident decided to take matters into her own hands. She wanted to stand out and be April Kepner. Being a plain and average brunette would keep her blended in with the crowd. A change to her appearance was necessary.

But she had never dyed her hair before and she worried she would screw it up like she had done with many other things. So on her day off from work, April visited a salon for a different kind of consult.

_"Red," Alejandro, the hair stylist declared with a thick accent._

_"Red?" she timidly repeated. Having been a brunette her entire life, changing her hair color to red would be a drastic change for her. All she had hoped for were highlights or a lighter shade of brown. "Like, red-red?"_

_He waved his finger, shaking his head. "No, no. More like auburn with a hint of fire," he enthusiastically stated, running his hands through her hair. "You will stand out, attract those men who never spent a second looking at you before. No more of this mousy-mousy. You want to be a bombshell or a wallflower?"_

_April nervously laughed. "I uhh, I just wanted people to stop confusing me with my dead best friend."_

_"Shh! Stop talking," he demanded, spinning her chair around. "When I'm finished you will feel like a different person."_

It took over an hour because she was also given a haircut, but she survived. However, the surgical resident had been hesitant to look at herself in the mirror fearing Alejandro went too far with his vision for her. But she felt satisfied with the finished product. The color wasn't as red as she dreadfully anticipated and the new layers to her hair were a nice touch. While she didn't feel like an entirely different person, the new do gave her a boost of confidence.

Nobody was going to call her Reed or Lexie now.

Sneaking into Meredith's house, April peeked her head inside of the living room, but nobody was there. The frat house was oddly quiet, though she was aware that Derek, Meredith and Lexie were working. And she suspected Jackson and Alex were still asleep on their days off. She actually hoped somebody would be around to show off her new hair color. The reveal would have to wait a little longer.

Walking into the kitchen to make herself lunch, the newly donned redhead heard footsteps trotting down the stairs. It had to be Alex, she thought, because Jackson had been rooming in the study downstairs. The door swung open, but instead of seeing her obnoxious roommate, it was a woman with long, black hair.

One of his skanks from Joe's.

"Oh, hello. Don't mind me. I just wanted a bottle of water before I head out," the woman greeted April, who suspiciously stared back at her. She forced herself to laugh. "Do you have any?"

"Umm… yes," she awkwardly responded, opening the refrigerator and grabbing a water bottle. Before handing it to the unknown woman, she immediately questioned, "And you are?"

The woman smiled at April. "I'm Jessica. I'm from Radiology," she politely answered. She removed the cap from the bottle and chuckled. "I must say, you are so lucky. Living with a hot guy like Karev? Oh, and the one with the eyes. Avery? How do you handle your self-control? I know I wouldn't be able to."

Rolling her eyes, she guffawed at the radiologist's comments. "It's not as great as you make it sound," April scoffed. A mischievous smile slowly formed on her face. "I mean, especially since Alex just got over a nasty case of chlamydia."

Jessica nearly choked on her water. She cleared her throat, staring back at the surgeon with wide eyes. "_Chlamydia_?" she reiterated, shaking her head in disgust afterwards. "Oh my God, he- he never told me about that. Oh, God! If he asks you where I went, tell him I… had to leave for an appointment."

"Sure, no problem," she nonchalantly replied.

The other woman turned around to leave, then she quickly glanced back at April. "Thank you for telling me, umm…"

"April," she happily chirped.

"Thank you, April," Jessica answered, turning around again to leave. "I swear, if that son of a bitch gave me chlamydia…"

Feeling proud of herself for possibly killing Karev's chances of another fling with the radiologist, April returned to preparing her lunch after she left the house. It was her way of payback for the on-call room incident. However, she felt slightly jealous of Jessica. She was tall with a slender body and a pretty face, definitely the type of woman Alex would sleep with. And while the woman had been nice to her, she wanted her out of the house as soon as possible.

She was a little annoyed with herself that she became territorial over a man who thought she was neurotic and a pain in the ass. He likely would give her crap for telling his one night stand that he recently had an STD. Then again, it was possible he _did_ have one and unknowingly gave it to somebody else. It wouldn't surprise her in the least.

Jackson walked into the kitchen yawning and scratching the back of his neck. His drowsy face let April know that he had just woken up. "Morning," he murmured.

"It's half past noon, loser," she teasingly responded.

He rubbed his eyes as he noticed his best friend's different hair color. Quickly blinking his eyes a few times, the pretty boy took a second glimpse of her new look. "Your hair is red," he commented curiously.

April ran her fingers through her hair with wide eyes. "It's ugly, isn't it?" she worriedly asked, biting down on her lower lip. "I-I I just wanted people to stop calling me Reed and Alejandro the hairdresser said I'd stand out, but he meant that in a positive matter. It's too red, huh? I knew red was a bad-"

"It's nice, April," Jackson assured her, cutting off her rambling. "Honest. The red suits you. I like it."

"Thank you," she sighed and smiled at him. "Because I myself love it, but if everyone else hates it, then that probably means I have horrible taste."

"Don't be paranoid. I'm telling you, it's great." He sat down at the dining table, sheepishly grinning at his fellow Mercy Wester. "Does this mean you'll be a really awesome best friend by making me lunch too?"

April playfully rolled her eyes at Jackson. The guy heavily relied on her for home cooked meals – as did the rest of the house. Somehow, she turned into the unofficial chef at Meredith's because nobody else worked the kitchen well like she did. Not that anybody had the time or energy to use the stove. Takeout dinners were their first choice after a long shift at the hospital.

"Fine, but only because you're my best friend," she agreed. "How did you and Charles survive without a decent cook?"

"Pizza became our third roommate," he sarcastically answered.

A few minutes later, Alex sleepily sauntered into the kitchen squinting his eyes at the unfamiliar redheaded woman whose back faced him. He stopped in his tracks trying to remember what color his one night stand's hair was. All he could recall was she nearly deafened him with her loud screams.

"Avery, did you bring someone home too? Didn't expect you to be into redheads…" He was caught off-guard when April spun around slightly glaring at him. "Dude, what happened to your hair?"

"I colored it," she defensively stated. "You think it's ridiculous, huh?"

Alex simply shrugged as he approached the refrigerator. Anything involving style or fashion was meaningless to him, so he didn't have much of an opinion about his roommate's new hair color. He was more relieved that he hadn't walked up to her and talked dirty into her ear thinking she was his one night stand from the previous night.

"You look different," he noted as he scanned the refrigerator for leftovers.

April raised her eyebrow at him. "Good different or bad different?"

"Let's just say Ronald McDonald would want to screw you now," he quipped, drawing a scowl from Jackson. "Don't get your freaking panties in a twist, Avery. It was a joke. There's nothing wrong with Kepner's hair."

It was sometimes difficult to read Alex because his sarcasm could easily be confused with his blunt honesty. And his constant teasing towards April made it even harder to distinguish between sincerity and mean spiritedness.

Whether he was telling the truth or not, at least he hadn't flat out said he hated it, she thought.

* * *

"I have no freaking idea what's up her ass," Alex complained as he changed into his scrubs in the residents locker room. Earlier that following morning, he bumped into Jessica from Radiology. Their encounter ended on a sour note after she chose to give him the cold shoulder, leaving him confused and pissed. "And for the record, I've had better."

"Maybe that was the same case for her," Meredith jokingly suggested. "Or you gave her something."

"Shut up. I'm clean," he retorted, pulling his scrub top over his head. "This isn't another O'Malley mishap."

April sat in front of her cubby quietly tying her tennis shoes. Although she wasn't sure who O'Malley was, his comment seemed to hint that Alex had actually contracted an STD in the past. The thought of it made her shudder. Now, she was more than relieved not to have slept with him in that on-call room, but listening to him rant about Jessica was amusing.

She normally didn't lie about somebody to hurt them, so she felt a smidge of guilt. And when the guilt crept up on her she reminded herself of the countless times her coworker heckled her for no reason at all. In her mind, her counterattack was long overdue.

Meredith left the locker room first and the perky resident decided to chase after her. "Umm, Meredith? Where are you headed off to?"

"I'm not sure yet, but I'm bound to find out soon," she answered. "How about you?"

"I told that girl from Radiology that Alex had chlamydia," April blurted out, grimacing as her roommate glanced back at her surprised. She hadn't told anybody about her conversation with the radiologist, but she was itching to tell somebody not named Karev. "Is- is that a terrible thing to do?"

Meredith softly laughed. Unlike Cristina and Alex, she didn't know April – or even Jackson – very well on a personal level yet. Her initial impressions of the redhead weren't the best considering she had been crushing on her husband like a pathetic intern. But they shared heart wrenching moments during the shooting. Learning about Reed's death, the miscarriage – it somewhat brought them together.

And April wasn't as painfully annoying as others believed her to be. Inside of that perky woman was an insecure person. The fact that she tried to lie about her first sexual experience was enough proof. Despite that, she knew how to stand up for herself, which won her some points. Also, letting her live in the frat house turned out to be a fortunate decision because she prevented their home from turning into a pigsty.

She was a good roommate even though she was overly perky at times.

"Why would you tell her that?" Meredith amusingly inquired. "I mean, I'm not the biggest fan of Alex bringing home random women every night, but a simple, 'Get out', would've worked just fine with me."

"I… didn't want to be rude. And it's your house, you know? I can't act like I own the place when I haven't been living there for very long and sometimes I wonder if you're going to kick me out since I know you only took me in because my best friend died-"

"April, you're welcome to stay in my house for as long as you want," she insisted, slipping her hands inside of her lab coat pockets as she scrunched her nose. "Well, until you find a husband or we all become too old to be living under one roof. Whichever comes first."

"Right. Umm… you're not going to tell Alex that I gave him fake chlamydia, are you?"

Meredith shook her head with a smirk. "He's my friend, but your secret's safe with me. Besides, it's kind of funny, especially since it came from you. The less he sleeps around, the better. And I'll have you to thank for that."

"When you put it that way…" April smiled gleefully as she walked alongside her colleague. "I'm glad I did it."

* * *

Seattle Grace Mercy West had turned into a madhouse within a matter of minutes after a college shooting brought in dozens of wounded victims. There weren't enough operating rooms for the surgeons to occupy, so they were forced to use the trauma rooms in the ER and the spaces available in the free clinic. The event also brought back awful memories of the shooting spree that had happened nearly half a year ago. It took weeks for some doctors to fully recover from the incident, while others still hadn't.

Yang suffered the most out of all of them. Her post-traumatic stress had taken a toll on her and she quit the program. But the sight of speeding ambulances passing by was like divine intervention for her. Now, she was back where she belonged, working with Teddy Altman in the OR to save a life – the _shooter's_ life, of all people – while their fellow surgeons watched from the observation gallery. Twenty five out of twenty six victims had survived because they managed to save them all. It was almost surreal that the last one standing was the person responsible for all of it in the first place.

A guy like Alex could understand why the shooter deserved to be saved too. People with a normal state of mind didn't just walk onto a campus and start shooting. They were sick like Aaron. He wouldn't want doctors to give up on his brother simply because he tried to kill their sister. So while the shooter was likely in deep shit afterwards, their jobs were to save lives regardless of the stupid crap they pulled.

In the end, all twenty six injured people admitted survived. It was a momentous feat considering they were unable to save some of their own when Gary Clark attacked. They did their jobs and it felt freaking good. So good that they all burst into laughter to release all of the stress they had endured throughout the day.

For April, she had been forced to oversee the clinic for Hunt. It was a daunting task having to order doctors and nurses around, making sure supplies consistently remained available while surgeons operated and keeping track of who was working on who. Upon arriving home, all she wanted was to relax on the couch with the small pint of strawberry ice cream she kept hidden in the back of the freezer.

She had the living room all to herself as she pigged out on her ice cream and watched _Pretty Woman_ on Lifetime. It was how she and Reed used to spend their free time after work when they lived together – stuffing their mouths with ice cream while watching a chick flick. The redhead missed those days because she lacked a close girlfriend to confide in whenever she needed to rant or just talk about anything on her mind.

Before April could get another scoop of ice cream, Alex joined her on the couch and dipped his finger into her pint. "And I'm finished with the strawberry ice cream," she bitterly announced, placing the lid back on and setting it on the coffee table. "Why are you so gross?"

He chuckled and licked the ice cream off of his finger. "I washed my hands."

She rolled her eyes in response. "I was looking forward to eating that since my shift ended," the not so perky woman scolded him and folded her arms. "And it was a brand new pint too!"

"Whatever," her roommate casually replied, resting his feet on top of the coffee table. Alex uncomfortably stared at the TV. "What the hell is this crap? Is she a freaking a hooker?"

"You've never seen _Pretty Woman_?"

"Do I look like a dude who watches chick flicks?"

April sighed in frustration. "Why can't you answer me without being a douche?"

"Maybe if you stopped being so damn uptight all the time…" Alex muttered. He knew when he spotted her in the living room it would be a risk to join her. The chances of them having a civil conversation was low. So far, his prediction was correct. "I was hoping the new hair would've made you less annoying. Nope, still the same."

"Well, if I'm so annoying, then leave. Shouldn't you be at Joe's searching for a new skank to sleep with?" she sneered.

"I'm too freaking tired for that. Plus, I've been getting some dirty looks from some of the chicks at the hospital. I don't know what the hell that bitch Jasmine told them, but I'm not their favorite person," he whined.

"Her name was Jessica," April corrected him. "It doesn't surprise me that you can't remember her name. I bet they're all the same to you. Just sex objects for you to play with and throw away later."

"For crying out loud, are you still pissed about the on-call room?" Alex shifted on the couch to face her. "I told you I was sorry and I didn't apologize because Mer made me talk to you. So if you want to stay pissed, then that's your problem not mine."

She laughed to herself, shaking her head. "I'm not upset over the on-call room thing anymore. I don't think you treat a lot of women with respect, that's all."

"That's crap," he scoffed. Kepner was the last person he wanted to open up to, but he felt it was necessary to defend himself since she was practically clueless about his personal life. "I never went to Vegas. I was in Iowa that weekend because my younger brother tried to kill our sister. He's schizophrenic. I had to go home and commit him into a nuthouse. And my mom's got the same thing. I spent a huge chunk of my childhood and adolescence making sure she took her pills, so she wouldn't go crazy on us. So maybe I don't always show it, but I do respect women, at least the ones who are important to me. Yet somehow, I'm the one who gets screwed over."

"Oh," she softly said. Glancing down at her lap, April fidgeted with her fingers. "I guess I understand why you were so frustrated that day. Thank you for telling me. Umm… but I have one question, Alex. If we did sleep together, would you have… pretended it never happened afterwards?"

"Only if it was the lousiest sex ever," he responded with a smirk, then he laughed when she opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out. "Seriously, Kepner. If you wanted it to be good, I would've made it good."

The conversation had grown awkward, though April couldn't blame anyone but herself for it. She jumped up from the couch, picking up her ice cream from the coffee table. "I'm going to put this away and retire early. I'm super exhausted, so goodnight."

Alex watched her rush out of the living room with a puzzled expression on his face. There was something about the redhead that was intriguing, albeit in an irritating way. He actually spilled personal information about himself and _she_ was the one feeling uncomfortable. She acted so freaking weird sometimes and it bugged the crap out of him.


	3. The Notebook

**Thanks for the reviews and please continue to let me know what you think :)**

**Enjoy!**

* * *

It was just another hectic morning at the frat house. All of the doctors were wandering back and forth through the upstairs hallway, walking in and out of their bedrooms and into the bathroom as they got ready for another day of work. While Jackson, Lexie and Alex fought for space in the bathroom, April had gotten a head start by waking up earlier and taking advantage of being alone. She was an early riser, always awake before everyone else. None of them understood how one could be so perky in the morning.

April was dressed and ready to leave – an hour before they were to leave the house. So she did her typical selfless act of making breakfast for anybody who cared to eat a cooked meal over sugary cereal. French toast, scrambled eggs and bacon were on the menu for the day and she also had the coffee ready for her roommates. She waited in the kitchen for the first person to appear while she poured coffee into her own travel mug.

The door swung open and Lexie walked inside groaning. "Those two guys, I swear. They know there are more people living in this house than there should be and they complain about _me_ hogging the bathroom!" she complained, angrily sliding out the stool by the counter and sitting down. "And I was in there last!"

"Breakfast?" the redhead brightly asked, holding up the plate full of French toast. "There's plenty for all of us. Eggs and bacon too."

"I'm allergic to eggs," the third year resident grumbled and reached for the bacon. "But thanks anyway."

"Oh! Umm… I'm sorry. I'm pretty sure you told me this once and it slipped my mind," April apologetically said. She lightly slapped her palms on top of the island counter and smiled. "Okay, how about you tell me what I can make for you next time? I promise I will make anything you want."

Lexie forced herself to smile as she bit a piece of her bacon. "Sure." She swallowed before she decided to ask, "How do you do it? You're so… so freakishly perky in the wee hours of the morning. It's almost not normal. You're like a freaking Teletubbie, April, and I mean that in the nicest way possible."

"I grew up on a farm. My sisters and I were raised to wake up early and help our father with the chores," she answered with a shrug. "I'm used to it, I guess. Why? Does my perkiness bother you? Should I be grumpier in the morning?"

"Uhh, no. Stay perky. Just keep the perkiness down a notch when it's my time of the month," the brunette quipped.

April slowly nodded her head, keeping the smile on her face. Although her perkiness was a huge part of her personality, she also knew it could be other people's biggest pet peeve about her. She couldn't help it and keeping an upbeat attitude was hard work. It was the best way to hide her insecurities. The continuous teasing from her peers had always been a part of her life. Her own sisters did it, so it wasn't a surprise that her friends engaged in it as well.

People had told her to change in the past, but nobody could change in a single snap. And even though certain aspects of happiness were missing in her life, she considered herself to be happy enough.

The next person to enter the kitchen was Derek, who headed straight for the coffee maker. "Good morning, Dr. Shepherd," April cheerfully greeted the neurosurgeon. "French toast?"

"Ah, I'd love some, but I'm running a bit late. I've got a craniotomy in an hour and a half, so I need to get prepped for that," he regretfully answered and poured coffee into his mug. "But it smells great, Kepner. See ya at the hospital."

"Damn. At least I know the guys will chow down on this," she dejectedly said after Derek left. April placed her elbows on top of the counter and rested her hands against her cheeks. She really hoped somebody would eat the breakfast she prepared because she didn't want it to go to waste.

Meredith walked into the kitchen, followed by Jackson and Alex. Both men weren't fully awake yet based on their yawns and tired expressions. Each of them went for the coffee first, disappointing the redhead.

"Breakfast, you guys," April chirped. She pointed at the untouched French toast and scrambled eggs. "Please have some, especially you two men over there."

"Awesome, you cooked," the pretty boy approved, walking to the counter and grabbing a plate. Jackson took two pieces of French toast, then he dumped scrambled eggs and bacon on one piece of bread before turning it into a sandwich. "I bet nobody ever came up with this idea."

Lexie rolled her eyes and laughed. "Oh, please."

April picked up the plate with bacon and held it out to Alex. "Karev, eat." She furrowed her eyebrows when he took the whole thing from her. "I didn't mean take the plate. What if Meredith wants some bacon?"

"She doesn't," her obnoxious roommate insisted as he sat down beside Lexie. Alex ate two pieces of bacon at the same time and used a fork to get some scrambled eggs. "Good stuff, Kepner."

She watched him eat from the large plate of eggs and softly groaned. "Well, I guess nobody else is going to eat eggs now since you somewhat marked your territory with your saliva."

"Whatever," Alex muttered, reaching for the orange juice set out on the counter. "Hey, who has the latest _American Journal of Surgery_ on them? There's an article by this dude I knew in medical school that I want to read. He was kind of a dumbass, so I want to see if he's still a dumbass."

"Oh, which article was it?" April inquisitively asked.

"Uhh, I don't know. His name is Martin Damon."

"He wrote the article about recurrent soft tissue infection in patients who had MRSA? That one was wonderfully written. The statistics were very-" She paused when she noticed Alex blankly staring at her and cleared her throat as she glanced down at her cell phone. "It's upstairs in my bedroom. You'll find it on the desk."

He snickered, sliding off of the stool and wiping his greasy hands against the back of his jeans. "Thanks."

"Don't touch anything else in my room, Alex!"

"Yeah, yeah," he mumbled on his way out of the kitchen.

Alex jogged up the stairs and entered April's bedroom. It was the first time he had been in that particular bedroom in a while. He fully expected it to be decorated with girly crap, but it was surprisingly bare. Perhaps she had been afraid to go all out since it wasn't her house. With the exception of the bedding and some picture frames of her family hanging on the wall, the bedroom still partially felt like it belonged to Izzie Stevens.

He hadn't thought about her lately until he walked into that bedroom again. Sometimes he didn't want to think about her because his memories only reminded her of how their marriage collapsed following the cancer and the near death experience and the fact that she freaking left him. They were divorced now, but a part of him still loved her. However, they were now at different places in their lives. He just wanted his ex-wife to be happy… wherever she was.

Like April had mentioned, the journal Alex was searching for was sitting on her desk. There were tabs sticking out of various pages causing him to shake his head. She took too many damn notes in his opinion. He wondered how pissed she would be if he screwed around with the tabs and mixed them up.

He turned to leave the bedroom, but he stopped after spotting a specific red notebook on the bedside table. April's little red notebook was like the Holy Grail. Lexie had been the only person he knew of who actually read its contents, but that was an old notebook. They were all certain the perky doctor had a box of red notebooks stashed somewhere because she zoomed through each page, recording everything that she felt she needed to write.

And it was very difficult to snatch the red notebook since she rarely left it out of her sight. This was likely the easiest opportunity he had to peek inside. Alex tossed the medical journal onto April's bed and picked up her notebook. He was amazed by how each page had been filled from top to bottom, no empty space anywhere. Medical notes, random quotes and personal thoughts were jotted down.

_Who knew being a virgin could be one of the worst things in the world?_

It was sad that she could only talk to her freaking notebook about her virginity woes, he thought. He and their coworkers never hesitated to poke fun at her, calling her the Virgin Mary or any other name that implied she was a virgin. Alex still believed April would be less uptight if she just gave it up already.

_Nobody's loved me yet. Probably nobody ever will._

"Freakin' A," he muttered to himself.

Reading her notebook was almost equivalent to finding a suicide note with medical terms written in between. For each page he read, the more he started feeling sorry for the perky woman. To be so jolly and chirpy on the outside, yet the complete opposite on the inside – even he wouldn't wish that kind of unhappiness on anybody.

April walked into her bedroom, her eyes widening when she found Alex reading her notebook. "Alex!" she screeched, causing him to fumble with the red book and drop it on the floor. "What the hell do you think you're doing?! What part of, 'Don't touch anything else in my room', did you not understand?"

There really wasn't any good excuse to make because he had been caught red handed. By the mortified look on her face, he was in deep shit.

"I… found your journal," he awkwardly replied, picking up the medical journal from her bed.

"What did you read?" she harshly whispered with a scowl. April approached Alex and slapped his bicep as hard as she could, making him grimace. She reached down for her notebook and continuously hit him with it. "Get out of my room! You're not allowed in here ever again!"

"Stop freakin' hitting me first!" he retorted, shielding himself from her wrath. "If you want my opinion, you should go see a therapist. Writing crap in your notebook won't do you any good."

"Get out!" the redhead shouted, forcefully pushing Alex out of her bedroom and slamming the door afterwards.

He turned around, furrowing his eyebrows as he knocked on the door. "We're leaving in like twenty minutes, you know." The sounds of sniffling on the opposite side of the door made him feel guilty.

_Oh, crap. I broke her._

It was probably a good idea to avoid Avery and his fists for the rest of the day.

* * *

"So tell us what you saw in there," Cristina pestered Alex while they ate lunch in the tunnels with Meredith. Everybody in the frat house overheard April's outburst from downstairs, so word slowly started to spread amongst their inner circle about the red notebook incident. However, the Evil Spawn remained tightlipped over what he read. "C'mon, you know you want to tell us. Or just tell me. You don't have to say anything to Mer."

Alex slouched on the wheelchair he used to sit down. "No. I'm not an asshole," he murmured, drawing skeptical stares from the Twisted Sisters. He rolled his eyes and sighed. "Okay, _today_ I'm not an asshole."

"You sort of already are one for reading her notebook," Meredith nonchalantly implied. The car ride to the hospital had been uncomfortable for everyone. April was in a mood, bumping Lexie from the front seat. And the latter was forced to sit in between Alex and Jackson, so the pretty boy wouldn't try to kick his ass for hurting his best friend. "Have you apologized yet?"

"I can't. She's been dodging me every time we're in the same room," he complained. "And she purposely hangs around Stark because she knows I can't handle talking to that gremlin. She's as moody as freaking Stark right now. Worse than PMS."

"Well, can you blame her? You read some of her most inner and private thoughts," she scolded her friend.

"Oh, whatever. Don't pretend you've never been curious about what Kepner writes in that stupid notebook," he scoffed, stuffing a handful of fries into his mouth. "I mean, she protects that thing more than her virginity. It was just sitting there by her bed. That notebook was literally screaming at me to open it."

Cristina softly groaned. "Okay, so spill it already. What did you see? Anything juicy like… does she have a third nipple? Is her perkiness just an act because she's secretly a sociopath?"

"Give her a break. I think April's just a naïve woman who may have been a little sheltered growing up," Meredith insisted while she chewed her lunch. She pointed her fork at the Asian doctor. "And she makes some pretty damn good French toast. You should try them sometime."

"She really does cook non-disgusting food. A hell of a lot better than anything Mer's cooked," Alex quipped and chuckled when she threw a balled up napkin at his head.

"I'll admit, she can be annoying at times, but she's not a bad person. And you know, she tripped over her best friend's dead body. She's still fragile over that," she added. "If I tripped over Cristina's dead body-"

"I'll never die," the arrogant resident chimed in. "You, on the other hand, will probably die first."

Meredith smirked at Cristina. "I'm just saying, I would be completely traumatized if I tripped over your dead body."

"You saw your husband get shot and you asked that same shooter to shoot you," Cristina recalled. "Wasn't that traumatizing enough? Why would you even think about me being dead? What kind of friend does that?"

"Shut up," she playfully retorted. "Forget I brought it up."

By then, Alex had zoned out his friends and his mind drifted elsewhere. He couldn't stop thinking about the notes he had read from April's red notebook. While he hadn't read many pages, he had seen enough to realize how lonely she really was regardless of the company she was surrounded by at the hospital and at home. And he understood what it felt like to be in a crowded room and still feel completely alone.

Sleeping with a bunch of women didn't replace his loneliness. None of them were Izzie. He never took the time to get to know most of his one night stands on a personal level. Frankly, he couldn't care less how many siblings they had or what they studied in college. All he wanted was a good lay.

But now he found himself relating to April freaking Kepner. That red notebook put a curse on him.

Cristina noticed her coworker was lost in thought and staring into blank space. "Hey, Evil Spawn. Whose body are you imagining tripping over? We're past that topic now."

"Huh?" Alex shook his head, snapping out of his zone. "What are we talking about?"

"What we were you thinking about?" Meredith countered.

"Nobody."

"I asked what, not who," she suspiciously answered, raising her eyebrow at him. "Okay, so _who_ were you thinking about, Alex?"

He gathered his trash and stood up. "Like I said, nobody. Anyway, whatever. I've gotta check on some post-ops," Alex lied before leaving the two women behind. He wasn't in the mood to be interrogated by Meredith and Cristina. They would have given him crap if they knew who he had been thinking about.

Hell, he wanted to give himself crap for letting April get inside his head.

* * *

Bitched at, thrown up on, ignored by the chicks in Radiology again. A drink or two at Joe's was definitely necessary to help Alex wind down before heading home to Meredith's. Walking into the bar, he was in a grumpy mood. Not that it was unusual for him to be pissed off at everyone and everything, but working with an attending like Stark automatically turned his day into shit. Ever since their first meeting, the older man never warmed up to him, especially after he outsmarted him more than once. Getting dumped on with scutwork truly meant he landed on his shit list.

He took his typical seat at the bar and waved over Joe the bartender. "Uhh, beer and a bacon cheeseburger for me. Oh, and throw in some wings too, dude."

"Rough day at the office?" Joe inquired as he filled a mug with beer. Alex simply shrugged and nodded in response. He was used to the surgeon's quick and vague answers, but he always got the point. "I hope you didn't kill anybody."

Alex softly chuckled and sipped his beer after Joe set it in front of him. "No, but I wanted to," he admitted, mostly referring to Stark. "Working in a place full of sharp objects and you don't turn on somebody and stab 'em? Takes a ton of will power, I swear."

"You're there to save lives, not take them away," he reminded him.

"Yeah, yeah. I know," the fourth year resident grumbled, glancing down at the counter. "It's been a long ass day. I'm sure you don't want to actually listen to me complain about everything that pissed me off today."

Joe grinned at Alex. "You're right. I don't." He pointed over his shoulder. "But maybe she'll want to listen. Looks like she's had a pretty bad day herself. You two can vent together."

Gazing up at the woman Joe was referring to, Alex slightly scowled when he saw April sitting at the far end of the counter by herself. There were two empty shot glasses and one filled with what he suspected was tequila. If she had been moping all day over her precious notebook being read, then he felt like an even bigger ass.

"Kepner?" he replied unamused. "Dude, I work with her. And I live with her too. I see her more than I want to every freaking day. Besides, I'm the last person she wants to see."

"Oh, man. Did you sleep with her and not call her back?" Joe snickered when Alex glared back at him. "Alright, I'll go ring up your burger and wings now."

"Thanks."

Alex drank his beer again, sighing as he set his mug down. His eyes peered back at April, who appeared to be hesitant about downing her third shot. It was obvious to him that she wasn't a big drinker and the first two tequila shots were likely having an effect on her. And he could tell she had been crying. Her cheeks were bright red and the frown on her face made it even more evident.

No way he was going to get up and talk to her. The one on one talking crap wasn't his thing. Opening up to her once was enough and he doubted the redhead would even bother looking at him. Whatever.

But his attention stayed drawn to April when an unfamiliar man approached her. His slicked back hair signaled a red flag for Alex. Not to mention, the guy had a sleazy smile that immediately annoyed him. Definitely not his roommate's type – though he wasn't sure what her type actually was except for douchey men like himself.

Watching them interact, he seemed to be offering her a drink in his hand. Red flag number two, it was probably spiked with some date rape crap, Alex suspected. Being the smart woman that April was, she respectfully declined and waved her hand to show that. But the douche wouldn't back down. He continued to offer her the drink and even placed his hand on her shoulder. She was now visibly uncomfortable, yet he continued to bother her.

This time, Alex decided he needed to do something. The more he watched Mr. Sleaze Balls harass April, the more he felt compelled to beat his face in. Pushing himself up from his stool, he casually approached the two and stepped in front of the other man.

"Hey, back off, dude. She's with me," he stated in a threatening tone.

"Get lost, punk," the man retorted. "I've been watching her since before you got here and I know she's not yours."

Alex grabbed the man's neck, catching him off-guard when he slammed his face against the counter and held him down. "I'm not sure you heard me the first time. I'll ask you again nicely," he sternly said. "Back off."

"Karev, let go of the customer," Joe called out from behind the counter. "You don't want me calling the cops, do you?"

He inhaled sharply and slowly released the man from his grip. Thankfully, he learned his lesson and quickly moved away from Alex without looking back. April sat quietly in her seat trying to process what had just happened. Karev came to _her_ defense? Then again, she was glad he did because that man was disgusting. However, that didn't mean her coworker was off the hook.

"Am I supposed to bow down to you now, Alex?" she irritably questioned. "You're the super stud because you saved the damsel in distress?"

"That idiot wouldn't leave you alone. Did you _want_ him to drug you up and take you home to his date rape dungeon?"

"Okay, I'm pretty sure you're exaggerating that part. Fine, I wanted him to leave me alone, but I never asked for your help." April pointed her finger at Alex. "And I know you're just pitying me because of what you read in my notebook, but I don't need your pity. I already have people comparing me to Teletubbies and- and telling me to change how I talk because they can't stand my voice. You pitying me only makes me feel worse, so stop it!"

"Kepner, I don't pity you-"

"No, just stop talking," she demanded, picking up her shot glass and drinking her last round of tequila. Tears filled her eyes as she forced herself to swallow the unpleasant tasting alcohol. She cleared her throat before grabbing her purse and walking past Alex. The redhead stopped in her tracks and spun around to face him one more time. "Oh, by the way, the reason why some of the women at work won't talk to you is because I told one of them that you had chlamydia."

Scrunching his face into a pout, Alex watched April leave the bar in a hurry. Truthfully, he had expected her to be grateful that he saved her from that man, but it was the total opposite. Instead, he only infuriated her more.

Freakin' A.


	4. She's Different

**Thanks for the reviews and sorry for the wait! Hope you enjoy this next installment :)**

* * *

Alex stepped out of his patient's room and stopped by the nurses' station to drop off a chart. He stood beside April, who quietly jotted down notes in another chart. "Do you want to switch patients for a while? My kid hasn't puked in three hours, so I think he's done with the oral ejaculation," he offered, though the redhead remained silent. He hoped his joke would get her to laugh, but nothing. "Jesus, Kepner. It's been _four_ days. How the hell can you still be ignoring me?"

He normally wouldn't give a crap if she spoke to him or not, but no matter how many times he apologized for reading her red notebook, she pretended he was a ghost. It frustrated him because she acted like her usual perky self around everyone else, but whenever he appeared she turned into a mute.

But what also frustrated Alex was _why_ he let April's silent treatment bother him. She had done it before and it didn't faze him, so why did he feel differently now?

They became a bantering duo when she returned to Seattle Grace Mercy West after Shepherd rehired her. Their immature arguments increased after she and Jackson moved into Meredith's house. He was supposed to be more annoyed with her now than ever because they lived under the same roof. April was a neurotic neat freak, a perky Care Bear in disguise and most likely not human.

Yet here he was, almost begging for her forgiveness.

"You're always nagging me to stop being so freaking immature, but this time it's the other way around," he continued, letting out an annoyed sigh when she didn't break. "And I'm gonna keep telling you this until you believe me. I didn't say crap to anyone about what I read. You can keep acting like a brat or be mature and let it go."

"Dr. Stark, Mickey Johnson in room 3128 is ready to be discharged," she cheerfully said when the pediatrics attending appeared behind the nurses' station.

"Thank you, Dr. Kepner," Stark murmured before glancing over at Alex. "And Dr. Karev, how's Brian Williams' nausea holding up?"

"He's not puking, so that saves me another trip to the locker room to change scrubs," he amusingly replied. His superior blankly stared at him and walked away causing him to roll his eyes. "Jackass."

April handed her chart to the nurse and left without saying a word to Alex. He decided to follow her down the hallway with a smirk on his face. "What?" she asked irritably.

Placing his hands inside of his lab coat pockets, he walked beside her, matching her pace when she tried to speed up her strides. "Nothing. I'm just gonna follow you everywhere until you stop with the silent treatment," he pestered her. "I'll even creep in the ladies' restroom if I have to."

She stopped them in the middle of the hallway, poking his chest with her finger. "What are you trying to pull, Alex?"

"I just want to make it up to you for reading your notebook," he insisted.

"How? By saying, 'Excuse me,' after you burp?" April sneered.

Alex quickly shrugged his shoulders. "Sure, if that's all you want me to do." He cursed under his breath when the perky redhead walked away from him, then he chased after her. "Look, I'm not the most patient guy out there and I'm kind of trying here. Tell me what to freaking do. I'll clean Mer's house. You do realize you're the only person who does that, right?"

She paused, slowly looking back at him as a smile formed on her face. "Really? _Every_ chore?"

_Crap._

His face dropped knowing he had pulled himself into a very unpleasant situation. Cleaning was one of the last things he ever wanted to do. Laundry was definitely not on his lists of interests either. His personal motto for dirty clothes was, "If it doesn't stink, no one will notice if it's been worn three days in a row." Although, he did prefer clean clothes. He was just too lazy to do the laundry himself.

"Fine. Whatever," he muttered. "Does this mean I'm off the hook now?"

April pinched her thumb and index finger together. "A little. Not until after you stick to your word. It's meaningless if I forgive you now and you don't clean the house," she teasingly said. "I hope your back's ready for some grueling work tomorrow."

Alex remained standing still when she strolled down the hallway. "I'm looking forward to it," he sarcastically called out, shaking his head after he turned and walked the opposite direction.

He was thankful that she stopped ignoring him, though.

* * *

The following morning, Meredith woke up without her alarm clock doing it for her. Derek was already long gone and at work on a Saturday, but the fourth years in the house were off for the day. She was on her way out of her bedroom when she noticed an unusual sight in the bathroom across the hallway. Initially, she had thought April was taking part in her weekend house cleaning routine, but the short, brown hair and the masculine physique let her know it wasn't her.

"Alex?" she softly said, watching her typically sloppy roommate scrub the inside of the toilet. Meredith couldn't believe what she was seeing. "Are you cleaning the bathroom?"

Alex was kneeling down on the tile floor and groaned as he pushed himself up to his feet. "It's part of a deal with Kepner, okay?" He held out his hands, which were covered by pink rubber gloves. "And so were these. Don't freaking laugh at me."

Meredith pressed her fingers against her lips, fighting back a smile. "And you agreed to clean my house because…"

"I'm doing this to make up for reading her notebook. It's my fault for bringing up cleaning in the first place and she jumped on it," he explained, rolling his eyes. "After the bathroom, I've still got the downstairs one and I also have to vacuum the living room. My back endured enough torture when I wrestled, but this is a different type of pain. I might need a damn chiropractor when I'm finished."

She scrunched her face in confusion. "I still don't understand why you're actually doing it. Even _I_ was never able to convince you to clean my house and you've lived here longer."

He slightly scowled at his coworker as he flushed the toilet. "I owe Kepner a favor."

"You don't even like April," Meredith reminded him. She folded her arms, cocking an eyebrow at Alex. Something seemed off with her friend. "Or do you?"

"What? Hell no, I don't," he retorted. "Don't even freaking joke like that, Mer."

"I wasn't trying to joke around," she replied, chuckling at her defensive roommate. "It's just… April's been living here for about six months now and you two have never gotten along like this. I mean, you're actually listening to her and _cleaning_. It's not like you at all."

"So a guy like me can't clean something for once?" Alex agitatedly responded.

However, Meredith was right. He wasn't a guy who cleaned someone else's house. If he had his own place, it would likely be a pigsty because he would be too exhausted from work to tidy up his home. Wearing pink rubber gloves took balls. Alex loathed the color pink. It reminded him too much of the time he spent with Addison Montgomery and the Vagina Squad during his intern year. And his friend had made another point – since when did he let April tell him what to do?

He wasn't quite sure what he was feeling other than he didn't feel ridiculous about agreeing to clean the house. Only one time out of the numerous occasions April played housemaid. No big deal in his mind.

"You're not just any guy. You're Alex. Alex Karev doesn't clean people's houses!" Meredith declared in amusement. She laughed as she turned away to leave. "This is almost Kodak moment worthy."

"Shut up," he mumbled when she walked out of the bathroom. "And don't freakin' tell anyone about the pink gloves!"

After he finished cleaning the bathroom, Alex carried a bucket of dirty water to dump outside. He easily could have done it in the bath tub, but since he had just cleaned it, all of that hard work would have been pointless. And he was tired of scrubbing on his hands and knees. He was certain all of his joints cracked simultaneously when he stood up and stretched.

Walking outside, he emptied the bucket along the nearby gutter and returned to the house. Instead of moving forward with the next cleaning task, Alex entered the kitchen where April was making breakfast for Meredith. The smell of freshly cooked pancakes made his mouth water. He only ate a bowl of cereal before the perky doctor assigned him his chores, so he was starving.

"Are you making extra?" he asked curiously. "I deserve some sort of reward for cleaning, right?"

"Done with the bathroom already?" The redhead turned away from the stove to face her roommate. She noticed visible sweat stains on his gray t-shirt. "Wow, you're really working hard, aren't you?"

"This cleaning stuff is no joke," he huffed, setting the bucket on the floor and removing his gloves. "The bath tub and toilet are spotless, so nobody use it for the next forty eight hours."

April giggled and pointed at the vacant seat at the island counter. "Fine, you can take a break."

Alex sat beside Meredith and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the inside of his t-shirt. He quietly watched April cook by the stove, his eyes fixated on the tight blue jeans she wore for the day. It baffled him that he hadn't noticed before – she had a nice ass. The scrub pants didn't do her justice and her backside was normally covered by her lab coat as well.

Meredith quickly noticed her friend's perverted eyes and immediately slapped the back of his head. He groaned, wincing in pain as he hunched over and rubbed his head. "Dude!" he snapped. "Are you trying to give me a brain bleed?"

"What do you think you're doing?" she whispered, briefly checking to ensure April wasn't paying attention. "Stop it."

He simply scowled at her and rolled his eyes. In his mind, there was nothing wrong with checking out his female roommate. Being a man, it was a daily routine for him. Every day, he checked out at least one woman from work or elsewhere. Also, living with women made it difficult to avoid staring at them. Except for Meredith. He never dared to stare at her since he sort of considered her to be like a sister.

April brought over a plate of blueberry pancakes and set it in front of the twosome. "Eat before Jackson wakes up. He'll be wanting seven of those, so hog them while you can," she cheerfully stated.

"I heard my name," the pretty boy called out, stretching his arms over his head as he entered the kitchen. "Awesome, you made those blueberry pancakes I love."

Her eyes darted downwards at the counter to avoid staring at Jackson's shirtless upper body. He wore nothing but sweatpants and even she couldn't deny that her closest friend was gorgeous. "Uhh, have a seat. I-I I made extra just in case."

Alex furrowed his eyebrows as he watched April go from cheerful to flustered in a matter of seconds. Freaking Avery. While he had done a decent job keeping himself in shape, his body was nowhere near Jackson's physique. The man seemed to be perfect in every way, which annoyed him a bit. His farts probably turned women on, he thought.

"Kepner, stop drooling," he bluntly said.

"What?" Her head shot up with wide eyes. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"And I only have one nut," he sarcastically replied.

April hurriedly dumped the dirty dishes into the sink before heading out of the kitchen. "Remember to wash those, Karev."

Alex waited until she left before he turned around in his seat to look at Jackson. "How have you not tried to screw her, Avery? You've known her since you were freakin' interns – unless, she was seriously ugly back then."

"I don't know," Jackson answered with a mouthful of pancake in his mouth. "She's my friend. And April's… different. She's different from the women I've dated in the past. I'm not sure how to explain it, but she's a good friend, regardless of her high strung attitude and neurotic tendencies."

"But does she have to be annoying?" he jokingly questioned.

"You're annoying too," his roommate countered with a smirk.

Meredith snickered. "You are, Alex," she agreed, drawing an icy glare from the Evil Spawn. "But that doesn't mean you're not a good person. You're my annoying, yet somewhat reliable friend."

"Screw you both," Alex scoffed. He faced forward and continued to eat his breakfast. "Nobody asked you two to gang up on me. I just wanted to know why a guy like Avery is even friends with Kepner to begin with."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Jackson asked, raising his eyebrow. "Sometimes you're way harsh with her and she's always been nice to you. Maybe if you actually tried to get to know her better, you'd realize she's cooler than you think."

"Well, she's turned me into her personal cleaning slave for the day. This is some hard freaking labor. Worse than a rectal exam. I'm one step closer to getting arthritis from kneeling down so much. Why can't we just hire a maid?"

"Why pay for service when we have April for free?" Meredith noted. "And she loves cleaning, so it's not a problem for her. Besides, it's fun watching you step a foot into her shoes for a day, especially with those pink rubber gloves you have to wear."

Jackson let out a laugh. "Her special pink gloves?"

Alex muttered curse words to himself and stood up, picking up his plate at the same time. "I'm finishing this in my room," he grumbled and fled the kitchen to avoid even more teasing from his coworkers.

* * *

Cleaning every inch of Meredith's house turned out to be a daunting task. Her home felt bigger than usual after covering all of the areas, including the ones Alex hardly visited like the laundry room. He even cleaned Lexie's bedroom in the attic. It was two in the afternoon when he finally completed his deal with April. He felt filthy and needed a nice, long shower, but his back was sore, so he opted to rest on the couch first.

The house was quiet and all of his roommates had left him alone. Meredith took off to visit Cristina at the firehouse, Jackson went to the gym to preserve his toned body and April made a trip to the grocery store to stock the refrigerator. Being alone should have been Alex's golden opportunity to slack off and stop cleaning, but he wanted everything done and over with. He didn't want to be stuck with cleaning duties until late at night when the frat house was packed and hectic.

He lazily laid sprawled out on the couch while he watched a Mariners game on the TV. The front door opened and April arrived carrying groceries in both of her arms. She shut the door with her foot and peeked inside of the living room.

"Are you done?" she greeted him.

"Yeah," he muttered, raising his arm and quickly waving it. "I hope you know you're responsible for any bills I have to pay after I go see a chiropractor. I can't believe you enjoy doing this crap."

The redhead rolled her eyes on her way to the kitchen. "That's what growing up on the farm does to you," she said, her voice echoing from the kitchen. "Chores were 90% of my life until I graduated from high school and left for college."

Alex closed his eyes and sighed. "Lucky you," he mockingly replied. A minute later, he opened his eyes to see April hovering over him and dangling a beer bottle in between her thumb and index finger. "What's this?"

"What do you think it is?" she chuckled. "If you don't want it, then I'll keep it for myself."

He grinned widely and reached up. "Give it."

April watched her roommate sit up on the couch and pop open his beer. She plopped down on the couch beside him as he chugged almost half of the bottle. The nasty stench of his sweat mixed with body odor forced her to cover her nose with a pillow. "You stink."

"Well, I did spend the whole day practically rolling around in dust and crap," he murmured, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his t-shirt. Alex sniffed his armpit causing the perky resident to gag. "I don't smell _that_ bad."

"You're gross."

"You're… too clean."

She slapped his shoulder with the pillow and laughed. "That's not an insult."

"So, you're hot for Avery now?" Alex changed the subject. The mood in the living room suddenly changed as April opened and closed her mouth, hesitant to respond. He sipped his beer as he stared at the TV. "You couldn't look at him in the eye like he was Medusa or whatever. The dude's got the body of an Abercrombie & Fitch model, but he's not _that_ desirable."

Brushing her hair behind her ear, April shyly shook her head. "No. I… I just sometimes feel weird living with Jackson because he's so attractive, but I'm way out of his league. I've always made sure to keep him in the friend zone to avoid hurting myself for no reason."

"You don't think you're good enough for him?"

"Please, if I wasn't good enough for you, then how could I be good enough for Jackson?" she glumly answered, folding her arms as she slouched on the couch. "Besides, I'm 99% positive he's been crushing on Lexie. He may have a chance now since she dumped Sloan over the baby fiasco with Torres."

Alex looked at April irritably. "Why do you constantly put yourself down? Almost every other page in your notebook-" He paused when she furrowed her eyebrows at him. "Right. Not bringing that up again. Uhh, you don't give yourself enough credit, Kepner."

"It's not like you give me much credit to begin with."

"I do. What about when we did that freaking trauma certification with Hunt? You were badass that night. Remember the whole, 'Move or I'll run you down', bit?" he recalled and chuckled thinking about the moment the redhead turned into a hardcore trauma queen in the pouring rain. "It's still pretty damn hilarious."

She bashfully smiled. "I've never gone against authority like that before. It's one of those rare times when I broke the rules."

"Ah, c'mon. The only true rule Hunt had was to try not to crack and give up on trauma. You knew the helicopter crap he babbled about was all bullshit. He was just teaching us a lesson about how trauma isn't fair, but you made him look like a fool in the end. It was hot."

April glanced back at Alex with raised eyebrows. He thought she was hot?

"You don't have to lie," she insisted, pushing herself up from the couch. "And I guess I should thank you for cleaning the house and… forcing that creepy guy at Joe's to leave me alone. You don't owe me anything anymore."

"Hey, wait a minute," he called out to her as she walked out of the living room. Alex jumped up onto his feet and followed her into the kitchen. She attempted to distract herself by unloading the rest of the groceries. "I'm not a dude who cleans because somebody told me to."

"Then why did you agree to it? I fully expected you to turn me down," April questioned while she stocked the refrigerator. "You're an enigma, Alex. Sometimes I wonder what goes on in your head."

"There are some things I just don't want to talk about. Whatever."

"Okay, whatever," she muttered, looking over her shoulder at him. "So, what else are you in here for?"

Alex finished his beer and set the bottle on the counter. "Nothing," he mumbled, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He turned to leave, but instead approached April, shutting the refrigerator door. "You're good enough for somebody. You just gotta stop thinking you're not worthy of being loved because that kind of attitude sucks and it's annoying."

"Since when did you become deep and philosophical?" she replied amusingly.

"I'm being freaking serious right now, Kepner. If you want to believe you'll be alone forever, be my guest. You have nobody to blame but yourself for that."

He stormed out of the kitchen and went upstairs into his bedroom. Sitting down on his bed, Alex buried his face into his hands. "What the hell am I doing?" he groaned.

Although, he refused to openly admit it, he was slowly developing feelings for his roommate.


	5. Green-Eyed Monster

**Thanks for the reviews! While my canon ship is a mess right now, it's nice to switch over to my other ship that will never happen lol. As always, let me know what you think please :)**

**Enjoy!**

* * *

Alex impatiently checked his watch as he lounged on the couch with Jackson. The two men decided to spend their Saturday night at home, claiming the living room for a couple of hours to watch the Washington Huskies men's basketball team's away game at the University of Arizona. They had the frat house to themselves, so they gathered all of the beer from the refrigerator and the junk food from the cupboards and set them on the coffee table for easier accessibility.

But his mind hadn't been on the basketball game for quite some time. Instead, he wondered what time April would be home from her _date_.

A date with a nurse named Bruce. They were set up by another nurse in the Pediatrics department. Whether or not the redhead had been interested, she chose to go out with him since dates were a rarity for her lately. Men either found her too annoying or not intriguing enough to ask her out.

Nurse Bruce was an attractive man. Tall, black hair, broad shoulders and dimples that stood out when he smiled. And he was kind with a positive attitude about almost anything. An ideal guy for April.

Alex hated him because he was so perfect for his roommate. Him? He may as well call himself Oscar the Grouch since he had the tendency to snap at everybody while sporting his infamous Karev scowl. In retrospect, he screwed his chances with her without having to _actually_ screw.

"Dude, what time is Kepner supposed to be home?"

Jackson glanced back at his roommate with a puzzled expression on his face. "I don't know. Since when did you care what time she's home? You're always happy when she's not around," he noted. "Besides, she'd have a panic attack if she saw the mess we made in here."

"Do you think that Nurse Bruce is a cool guy? I mean, would you kick his ass if he did anything to her?" Alex questioned curiously. "You're pretty, but you sure as hell know how to leave a mark on people."

"You mean, if he tried to force her to have sex with him or something?" The pretty boy watched him nod. "Well, yeah. April's my best friend now. I have to protect her from scumbags who try to take advantage of her. Oh, and don't worry about yourself. I've already crossed you off my list."

"Thanks. You're a pal," he sarcastically replied.

It was barely eight o'clock, so expecting April to arrive home at any second seemed unrealistic to Alex. On a Saturday night, even a woman like her would want to enjoy the night. Probably talking about her favorite books or whatever. Maybe knitting her date a sweater. Something boring for sure. If he had taken her out on a date, he would have just brought her to Joe's. Completely unromantic. He never considered himself to be a hopeless romantic type of guy anyway.

And when the tiny piece of romance emerged out of him it was due to some spur of the moment crap. Marrying Izzie was the best example. He had actually recited a set of vows he had thought up in his head – while stealing bits from a graduation speech his patient originally planned. In Alex's mind, he could be romantic… if he wanted to be, but he was the anti-chick flick heartthrob. Yet somehow, the bright and shiny Kepner thought he had been worth a damn.

"Were dudes flocking to Kepner at Mercy West?" the former wrestler inquired.

Jackson snickered. "Why do you want to know?"

"I just freaking want to know," Alex retorted, propping his legs up on the coffee table and folding his arms. "Maybe if she was a mute, she wouldn't have problems finding a boyfriend or whatever."

His roommate threw a pillow at him from the opposite end of the couch. "I don't understand why any of this matters to you. In fact, I'm beginning to feel offended for her. Back off already," Jackson demanded. "But to answer your question, there were guys who were interested. However, her feelings weren't mutual and it was the opposite with men she _did_ like. You know what her problem is? She always falls for the wrong men. I keep telling her to stop crushing on guys who are out of her league, but she never listens."

Out of her league? Ouch. Perhaps Jackson's honesty is why April had such a difficult time with the opposite sex. Maybe she needed to hear it, but considering how sensitive she was, it likely hadn't boosted her confidence, or lack thereof. From the sounds of it, Alex thought he could probably count the number of boyfriends she had on one hand.

For the longest time, he had felt he was out of everyone's league, growing up in a broken home with screwed up parents who practically raised him in a bar. He used to believe the entire world was against him, especially when it came to love. Sex with random women was great, but when he finally poured his heart out to somebody they either went crazy or got cancer or worse – found better.

Was he really out of Kepner's league? A few months ago, he thought so. Now, maybe not.

His head darted towards the sound of the front door opening. The door slammed shut and tire screeches could be heard from outside. Both men sat up and pushed aside the curtains just in time to see a car speeding away. Next came the high-pitched groan as April almost literally stomped into the living room. She appeared agitated as she removed her jacket.

Date night did not go well at all.

"What happened?" Jackson immediately jumped up from the couch and approached the redhead.

April shook her head in disgust. "Bruce is a pig! Early on in the date, he was sweet and acted like a gentleman. Held the door open for me at the restaurant, pulled my chair out and everything. We even talked about things I was interested in," she recalled, then she folded her arms. "But after dinner, he took me to this nightclub and he turned into this gross pervert. He wouldn't stop grabbing my ass, despite the fact I told him a bunch of times to stop. And he kept trying to kiss me even though I didn't want to, so I yelled at him to take me home."

The pretty boy's face transformed into a scowl. "You want me to deal with him at work tomorrow?"

"No, it's fine. I told him if he came near me, Karev would kick his ass," she answered with a pout on her face.

On the couch, Alex slightly smiled to himself. April specifically named him and not Jackson to protect her. To him, that had to mean something. "Do you want me to? Because I can," he offered.

She brushed off his comment and pointed out a rip along the side of her dark purple dress. "And he also ruined my new dress! His car keys got caught against it and it ripped! I just bought this last week." Suddenly, she burst into tears, burying her face into her hands. "It was one of the worst dates I've ever had."

Jackson wrapped his arm around her shoulder and led her out of the living room. "C'mon, let's talk about this in your room," he soothingly said.

Now, Alex was the person scowling. While it didn't surprise him that April would rather be comforted in the arms of her best friend, he hated how she ignored him because he had been serious about kicking that nurse's ass. And if she allowed him to, he would have done so.

Did he consider himself the type of person to play the best girlfriend and listen to her mope? Hell no. That was what chicks were for – and apparently, Avery. Leave it to his roommate to rescue April. Jackson was Prince freaking Charming, while he was… Shrek, that big, green ogre who just growled at everyone and couldn't care less about their problems. Then again, Shrek _did_ win over the girl.

But she had also been an ugly, green ogre. Alex didn't think April was ugly at all. Crappy analogy when he thought about it more. The only other comparison he could come up with was Grumpy from _Snow White_, except now he was a pissy dwarf. Not a great choice either.

_What was the point?_ he thought. Both Mercy Westers were long gone and he continued to sit alone on the couch comparing himself to angry cartoon characters. Maybe if Jackson hadn't been hanging out with him, April would have confided in him instead.

Oh, who was he kidding? She probably would have ran straight to her bedroom. After the notebook incident, she hardly trusted him with her personal life.

* * *

The next morning, April strolled out of the locker room feeling a little more rejuvenated than the night before. Her talk with Jackson had helped. He assured her that one horrible date didn't mean her love life was doomed. She had just been incredibly unlucky. It was a new day, so she decided to pretend her Saturday nightmare hadn't happened. However, she was quickly reminded of her date when she spotted Nurse Bruce having a conversation… with Alex.

She stopped in the middle of the hallway to observe the two men. From her point of view, they definitely weren't making plans to meet up at Joe's to watch a game. In fact, Nurse Bruce looked intimidated by the fourth year resident. He was playing up the Karev scowl perfectly, making the other man scurry away when they were finished.

April walked towards her roommate, raising her eyebrow at him. "What did you say to him?"

"I told him if he even attempts to look at you, I'll beat his face in," Alex proudly answered. "That idiot won't be going near you again."

"Oh," she chirped, appearing impressed. "You stood up for me? You… you didn't have to do that."

"The guy was a dick," he nonchalantly replied and shrugged. "You're annoying, but that doesn't mean I don't like you or whatever. Can't let a freaking nurse get away with taking advantage of a surgeon."

The redhead softly smiled. Even though he managed to slip in a snide remark about her, she was grateful he had defended her. "Well, thank you." She walked to the nurses' station with Alex. "Whose service are you on today? I'm with Stark."

"Robbins. I can't believe you actually _like_ working for that grouch," he scoffed.

"He gives me good cases and he seems to trust me now."

Alex snickered. Occasionally, he had noticed Stark looking at April differently, like he was that creepy uncle at the family reunion. He wondered if she knew that the peds attending might have the hots for her. "He just wants to get into your pants," he mumbled to himself.

"Did you say something?" she asked, looking up from her chart.

"Uhh… do you like basketball?"

"Huh?"

"You know, that sport where people shoot a ball into a hoop?"

"I know what basketball is. Growing up on the farm doesn't mean I was shut out from the outside world," April retorted, rolling her eyes at Alex. "I meant, why are you asking me this? It's so random."

"I have tickets to a U-Dub game next weekend. They're good seats, courtside. Do you want to go?"

She stared at him confused. "But isn't basketball a thing between you and Jackson? I'm pretty sure sports is the only way you two can truly get along. I mean, I don't hate basketball, but I don't watch it often and-"

"Do you want to go or not?" he impatiently asked. "But if you're one of those people who constantly asks stupid questions during the game, then I'm taking back the invite. Even the crowd noise wouldn't cancel out your rambling."

"If you're already assuming I'm going to annoy you, then why are you asking me?" April argued. "You're better off taking Jackson. At least he wouldn't have a problem sitting with you because he'll be too focused on what's happening on the court."

He watched her leave the nurses' station with a stack of charts. Indirectly asking her out on a date for the first time resulted in a fail. His usual smart ass comments did him in. He was already having a hard time getting on some peds cases because Stark hated him and Robbins seemed to be teaming up with Callie's OB/GYN, Lucy Fields, and shutting him out of special cases. Ever since he called a baby a turnip, the maternal-fetal medicine fellow had disliked him.

His mouth really did screw him over every now and then, but he had never been a smooth talker. He was blunt and brutally honest, yet he believed it was better to tell the truth than lie, especially to patients. Some doctors disagreed with him because his way of being honest resulted in bad bedside manner, but he simply preferred telling it like it is.

With April, though, he realized he needed to be a little more sensitive.

* * *

"Hey, can I ask you guys a question?" Alex was having lunch with Meredith and Cristina in the cafeteria. "Say you're at this party and there's a ton of good food to go around. Like all of the junk you love to eat and can't get enough of, but what you really want is this dopey carrot."

His friends blankly stared at him in silence. "So, what's your question?" Meredith inquired with a smirk. "You do have a question to this, right?"

"What would you do? Do you just go for what you usually like or take the carrot?"

"Alex, if you want my carrots, then just ask without the cryptic talk," Cristina teased, tossing a baby carrot across the table and hitting his chest. "They're sort of stale, though. I wouldn't eat it."

"I don't want your stupid carrot," he muttered, setting the orange vegetable on his tray. "What I'm trying to say is… do you stick with what you're comfortable with or go outside of your comfort zone for once?"

Meredith slowly chewed her food as she furrowed her eyebrows at Alex. "I'm confused. Are we still talking about food or what?"

"Nevermind," he groaned. "I should've just kept my mouth shut."

"Okay, seriously. Now I'm just curious, so tell us what you're actually trying to say. We can't read your mind," she persisted.

Alex remained quiet while he ate his sandwich. There was no way in hell he wanted to spill the truth now mainly because he knew what the Twisted Sisters would do if they knew he had feelings for April. Cristina would throw every joke in the book at him and he didn't want Meredith to feel the satisfaction of her suspicions being correct all along. And the news would spread so fast that their perky coworker would end up finding out last and somehow assume everyone was playing a prank on her.

Jackson joined them at the table and quickly started eating his lunch. "Heard you threatened Nurse Bruce, Karev."

"Who told you that?"

"April. She said she saw you talking to him and that you would kick his ass if he went near her again," he replied in amusement. "You sure know how to make friends with people, huh?"

"Dude, I was doing her a favor and she was thankful," Alex explained. "Besides, that guy should be sporting a black eye or two. How are you not pissed about what he did to her? Wasn't he supposed to be so perfect for her? I swear, nurses don't have a clue."

"Evil Spawn defending the Virgin Mary. That's a first," Cristina quipped. "What's next? You'll buy her a puppy?"

He glared back at his friend. "Shut up. It was one good deed."

Meredith softly chuckled. "Like when you cleaned my house for her?"

"I owed her for the notebook thing," Alex insisted. "And Avery can agree with me. This nurse dude was a douche who mistreated our friend."

"April's not your friend," Jackson corrected him. "You even said once that you couldn't be friends with chirping squirrels. Oh, and you always say she's annoying because she talks too much and tries too hard to understand people. You hate how she's constantly cleaning the house-"

"Alright, you made your freaking point," he snapped and picked up his tray as he stood up. "I gotta go check on my pre-op."

Meredith waited until Alex left the cafeteria before she spoke again. "Am I the only one who's noticed how strange he's been acting lately? And by strange, I mean he's been _nicer_ to April."

"Is she the carrot?" Cristina gasped.

"She is!" she agreed. "Alex likes April!"

Jackson shook his head and laughed. "No way. He's still a douche to her, you guys. Besides, even if he does like her, there's no way she'll go there with him again. He burned her once and she's not going to risk getting burned again," he defensively said. "I know her better than anyone else. It's not happening."

* * *

Throughout the day, April wondered why Alex would invite _her_ to a basketball game. Was it going to be a real date? She was afraid to ask. After her latest disaster of a date, she thought it would be too soon to go out on another and with the Evil Spawn no less. First, he scared off Nurse Bruce and then asked her to join him at a Washington Huskies basketball game. He was probably still trying to make up for reading her red notebook, she thought.

Unless… it couldn't be. She doubted he had feelings for her. He had been acting a little nicer to her, but she fully expected his douchey treatment to return soon. He was Alex Karev. Being kind hardly lasted long.

Walking into the residents locker room to change out of her scrubs, the redheaded woman froze near the entrance when she noticed _him_ already inside and dressed in his street clothes. She took a deep breath and casually approached her cubby. With her confusing thoughts about Alex, she was hesitant to change in front of him.

April grabbed her clothes and rushed into the bathroom, drawing a concerned look from Alex. He rolled his eyes as he tied his shoes. It was a long day filled with avoiding Meredith and Cristina as much as possible. Their text messages teasing him about his roommate made him highly insecure around them. They figured him out and it bugged the crap out of him.

Two minutes later, she emerged out of the bathroom and tossed her scrubs into a bin filled with other dirty scrubs. "Oh, you're still here."

"Yeah, umm… I'm waiting for someone," Alex reluctantly stated. Truthfully, he was waiting for her and thought about asking her if she wanted to head over to Joe's, but he started to get cold feet. "Uhh… Lucy. Fields. You know her, right?"

April slowly nodded her head. Of course she knew who Lucy was. She was that beautiful blonde woman who worked in OB and could be found roaming around in Pediatrics. No surprise he was interested in her. She always thought blondes were Alex's type. His ex-wife was one. "I do, but… isn't she an attending? Why are you waiting for her here?"

"Because our locker room's a floor below the attendings', so why waste time going upstairs and waiting?" he irritably replied. "So, uhh… Avery's going to the game with me next week."

"I knew he would," she softly said as she wore her jacket. "You wouldn't have enjoyed it if I went with you anyway."

He was beginning to change his mind about not asking her out to Joe's. It was just for some drinks. Nothing too serious. "You know, I was kind of thinking that-"

"Hey, you're still here?" Jackson interrupted as he entered the locker room. He pulled his scrub top over his head while he walked to his cubby. "You two have any plans?"

Alex slightly scowled at their roommate. Avery and his damn wonder abs. And he noticed April had taken a quick peek at them. Freakin' A.

"I was just going home," the redhead answered. "But umm, Alex has plans."

"Oh, so you want to get a drink at Joe's with me?" Jackson asked. "Two-dollar pitchers tonight. I can't pass that up."

April smiled at her best friend. "Sure. I think I could use a pitcher tonight," she cheerfully responded and grabbed her purse from inside of her cubby. "I'll meet you in the lobby, okay? I want to check on one of my patients really quick."

"No problem." He waited for her to leave the locker room before he turned and faced Alex. "Listen, I know how you feel about her, but don't even bother, man. She's too good for your crap."

"How the hell do you know I'm not good enough for her? You already tell her all the time that she's not good enough for everyone else!" Karev fired back. "Which, by the way, makes you a crappy friend."

Jackson laughed. "You're taking my words out of context. I never said she's not good enough for every guy out there. I said she falls for guys who are out of her league." He nodded his head towards Alex. "And in your case, you're out of _her_ league. I already know you'll just end up hurting her because you've already done it over and over again with the way you speak to her. Don't make me sharpen my knuckles, Karev. I kicked your ass once and I can do it again."

Alex angrily picked up his bag and headed for the exit. "I don't need to listen to your crap, Avery." He saw an elevator closing and ran towards it. "Hold the doors!"

He managed to stick his foot in between the doors, forcing them to open again. Walking inside, he found April alone. "You just got into an elevator _now_?"

"These elevators aren't the fastest running in the world. You know that," she replied with a smirk. "Change your mind about going up?"

"Uhh, no. Lucy cancelled," Alex lied. "I'm going home instead."

"You don't want to join Jackson and I at Joe's?"

Deep down, he wanted to take the offer and would accept it in a heartbeat – if Avery wasn't going to be there. "Nah, I want to sleep… alone. Like, actual sleep and not with a woman."

April giggled. "I'm shocked." She stepped out of the elevator after it reached her patient's floor. "Okay, well… I'll see you at home then if you're not already asleep."

"Whatever," Alex mumbled as the doors closed.

He stuffed his hands inside of his jacket pockets and frowned. Maybe Jackson was right. What was the point of trying with her? They got on each other's nerves every chance they had. And April deserved a nice man, one who wouldn't call her annoying or make fun of her all of the time.

But dammit, he wanted her badly.


	6. Man Up, Karev

**Thank you for the reviews! It's nice seeing more AK2 love out there lol. I took some dialogue from episodes 7x16 & 7x17 for this chapter. I just love AK2 banter :)**

**Enjoy!**

* * *

"It's weird, it's weird. I mean, he's old and mean. He's like the Grinch. The Grinch asked me to dinner and… I said _yes_!"

Sitting in his bedroom, Alex felt an uncomfortable lump in the back of his throat as he listened to April have another freak out episode in the bathroom. He wondered if she had any idea that Lexie was busy screwing Jackson in the shower. Based on her nonstop rambling, likely not. He couldn't care less about those two. The fact that Stark had asked out his roommate made him feel sick.

Freaking Stark actually made a move on April before he could. She thought he was the Grinch. Why the hell did she accept his invitation?

The sequel to _How the Grinch Stole Christmas_ – the Grinch asking out an older, yet still so innocent Cindy Lou Who out to dinner. Might as well be some disgusting porno movie, Alex thought.

He heard her footsteps quickly pass by as she rushed downstairs to pee in the other bathroom, a perfect opportunity to give her much needed crap for accepting a date with the peds attending. Closing his laptop, Alex slid off of his bed and casually headed downstairs. He decided to wait just outside of the bathroom, arms folded with an arrogant smirk on his face.

When the bathroom door opened April yelped at the sight of her roommate standing in front of her. She placed her hand against her chest as she breathed rapidly. "Don't do that!" the redhead scolded him, walking past him. "What do you want?"

Alex followed her into the kitchen. She ignored him while she opened the refrigerator to find something to eat. He stood behind the island counter, his palms resting on top of the surface. For a minute, he quietly stared at her from behind. That preppy, blue sweater she wore and her hair neatly fixed – it was hot in a dorky kind of way. He shook his dirty thoughts out of his head. "Stark, huh?"

April immediately spun around holding a jar of pickles. "What did you hear, Karev?" she sternly asked. "I was talking to Lexie. You weren't supposed to be eavesdropping."

"And Avery," he chuckled. She stared at him confused in response. "Dude, he and Lexie were boinking in the shower when you barged in, so you pretty much told him about Stark too."

She rolled her eyes and groaned. Now it made more sense to her why the brunette woman was practically kicking her out of the bathroom. Jackson and Lexie didn't come as a surprise to her. Her best friend had been fawning over her for months. It was about time he made a move, even though the thought of losing quality time with him because he had a girlfriend bummed her out.

"It's just dinner," she insisted. "I was being nice."

_And nobody ever asks me out, so why not?_ she added in her head. Stark was nowhere near her type, but she saw a different, much kinder side to him. After she had convinced him not to call child protective services on their patient's parents, the peds attending surprisingly asked her out. It felt strange, yet she had trouble rejecting her boss.

"Yeah, and will he be bringing you back to his retirement home afterwards?" Alex sneered. "I hope your first time doesn't end with a trip to the hospital because you gave Stark a heart attack."

"Stark is not _that_ old!" April retorted and glared back at him. She shook her head in disgust as she set sandwich ingredients on the counter. "Obviously, I'm not surprised by your typical rudeness, but why do you care? It's not like he's asking me to marry him. And for the record, I would say, 'No', to that."

He smirked as he leaned forward against the counter. "If I were you, I'd start practicing…"

"Practicing what?" Her mouth dropped open when he playfully pointed at the pickle jar. While she could typically handle his constant teasing and ignore it the majority of the time, she felt he was being incredibly crueler than usual and she didn't understand why. "Seriously, what is your problem, Alex?! Why are you always so mean to me?"

"You make it easy, that's all," he half-heartedly answered, forcing a laugh. "C'mon, I'm just joking around."

April closed the refrigerator door and started making herself a sandwich. "Well, sometimes your so-called jokes go beyond funny. In fact, they're not funny at all. You just come off as a heartless and mean spirited person," she lectured him. She angrily spread mustard on her slices of bread. "Okay, yeah. Going out with Stark is weird and awkward and a little uncomfortable, but somebody actually sees me for the person I am. Rather than poke fun at my voice or taunt me for being a virgin, it's nice to know that not every guy out there is a jerk."

Alex awkwardly scratched the back of his neck. "Actually, Stark's a jerk too, but whatever," he muttered.

"You know what I mean. Don't be a smart ass for once."

"Do you even like the guy?"

"If you mean a guy I can see myself having a future with, no. Definitely not." She glanced up at him irritably. "And again, why do you care? Shouldn't you be at Joe's searching for the next woman to corrupt?"

He slightly scowled at the redhead. "I do other things besides having sex, you know."

"Like what? Oh, and cracking jokes about me to my face doesn't count," April scoffed as she finished assembling her sandwich.

"Uhh… can you make me a sandwich too?" he mumbled.

She furrowed her eyebrows at him, then she rolled her eyes. "Make your own sandwich, Alex!"

Alex watched his coworker leave him alone in the kitchen with her small dinner. She had purposely left out all of the ingredients for him to either use or put away in the refrigerator. Usually, she would give in and do the nice deed for him, despite not getting anything in return. But once again, his snide comments only made him even more unlikable and immature. Although April hadn't noticed, his jealousy – over _Stark_ – was beginning to show more and more.

* * *

For the next few weeks, Alex tried to ignore April as much as possible at work and at Meredith's house. It was almost damn near impossible to avoid her in the hospital because both of them were always working with Robbins and Stark respectively, but he managed to find a way to steer clear of her at home. The answer?

Derek's trailer. Bringing it to the parking lot of Seattle Grace Mercy West was convenient for him for a variety of reasons. It gave him a temporary home about fifty yards from the main entrance. With the competition for the next Chief Resident heating up, Alex wanted to be the first person to greet Webber in the morning and the last person to see him at night. Kissing his ass as much as possible was necessary if he was going to be a top candidate for the job. Avery had landed the gig on the Chief's diabetes trial, which gave him a head start over everyone else.

If nobody was telling him to move the trailer, he was going to shack up in the parking lot for as long as he could. Unless that person was Bailey. She forced him to relocate the trailer, so she could get her parking spot back. He may as well suck up to her too since she was close to Webber.

Because Arizona was forced to plan a baby shower for Callie with Mark Sloan, Alex found himself stuck on Stark's service – with freaking Kepner. His roommate had gone out to dinner with the older man at least three or four times since their first "date". He wasn't sure anymore after losing count, but just one date was enough for him to want to blow his chunks all over the place. Was the redhead actually into their boss?

Alex hoped not because falling for a woman who had feelings for a grumpy robot would provide more ammunition for Meredith and Cristina to get on his case. They had been teasing him nonstop over the fact that he hadn't made a move yet, the Asian doctor especially. She never hesitated to pounce on the opportunity to call out Evil Spawn for his cowardly behavior.

He stood in front of a computer pretending to do work, but truthfully, he was watching April and Stark interact beside the nurses' station. Throughout the morning, she had been receiving all of the more interesting cases, whereas all he got was scut crap. Obvious favoritism that frustrated him to no end. What annoyed him even more was the fact that they were making dinner plans _again_.

As Stark walked away, Alex quickly approached April with a smirk on his face. "You're gonna screw your way to the top," he teasingly said. "I'm impressed."

She stared at her fellow resident appalled. "I am _not_ screwing Stark."

"I am not screwing Stark," he repeated, mocking her high-pitched voice.

"We're not even dating!" she retorted.

"We're not even dating!" he mocked her once more.

"I'm serious. We're not," April agitatedly replied. "Maybe I thought we were at first, but it's not like that now. We're just hanging out. _Friends_."

Alex snickered. "Yeah – _naked_ friends."

The perky woman slightly pouted as he left her alone at the nurses' station. She headed the other direction feeling confused and aggravated by his typical douchey manners. So what if she hung out with an older man? Why did he continue to care in his own Karev way? Dozens of questions scrolled through her mind as she went to the nearest residents lounge for some coffee. Inside were the Twisted Sisters, simply sitting around and being lazy on the couch.

"Can either of you explain to me why Alex has to be an ass 24/7?" April complained and stood by the small coffee machine. She grabbed a paper cup and poured herself coffee. "Like, I really want to know. He's accusing me of sleeping with Stark."

Both Meredith and Cristina couldn't help but laugh out loud, to the redhead's dismay. They weren't laughing at her, but at Alex because they thought his jealousy was amusing. Their friend had it bad for the Virgin Mary and struggled to capitalize on his feelings, which neither of them could understand since they were polar opposites of each other.

"Are you?" Cristina asked curiously.

"Of course not! We're not even dating. I- I don't see Stark in that way," April defensively answered, furrowing her eyebrows at her colleague. "He's been really nice to me and… I just see a side of him that no one else does, okay?"

"His naked side?" Meredith quipped.

April pursed her lips as the two women laughed again. "You guys, I know you enjoy taking pleasure in my embarrassment, but I'm trying to be serious here. Alex has been acting more immature than usual with me. What did I do to him this time?"

"I'm wondering the same thing," Cristina murmured to herself. "I don't see it."

"See _what_?"

Meredith waved her hand and smiled. "Nothing. You know Alex well enough now to know that he'll always be an ass. That side of him won't go away anytime soon." She quickly shrugged. "And occasionally, he'll surprise you. Just wait and see."

"When you mean surprise you mean jumping out of a trash can and scaring me, right?" April sarcastically questioned. "And by the way, that was a rhetorical question. Don't bother answering it."

After their coworker left the lounge with her coffee, Cristina glanced back at Meredith. "Alex should've deflowered her when he had the chance. Now they're both uptight and annoying."

"Maybe that means they're made for each other," her companion suggested.

There was a moment of silence before both of them started cracking up hysterically.

* * *

Doctors and nurses spent part of the afternoon attending Callie's baby shower. There were food and games organized by a very enthusiastic Sloan and Robbins, who tried to remain as upbeat as possible for her girlfriend. The entire baby situation had been strange for everyone considering the threesome involved. For Alex, he was there because of the free food – and Arizona forced him to come.

She had taken him under his wing after seeing his potential in pediatric surgery and he preferred working with her over Stark by a landslide. The blonde woman seemed to believe in his surgical abilities more than anyone else did, so he at least owed it to her to attend the baby shower for his dysfunctional friends. Oh, and of course, he couldn't turn down free food. Plus, his refrigerator in the trailer was sparse, so he considered it cheap grocery shopping by hoarding the finger foods.

Alex joined his friends at the onesie coloring station. He had no idea why, but since he didn't have the time nor did he care enough to buy a gift for the orthopedic surgeon, spending fifteen minutes designing his own onesie for the baby was his only option. The conversation at the table was entertaining. Lexie was convinced Stark was gay, while Cristina claimed he had herpes, so he decided to join in on the fun.

"I vote gay. I just wish he was into me. Then I could be in all his cool surgeries," he amusingly added.

April rolled her eyes. "He's not gay. He doesn't have herpes and I'm not using him to get cool surgeries," she irritably replied. "We have a lot to talk about, okay? He's really interesting when you get to know him."

"Which is why she's taking her pants off for him tonight," he muttered.

"What?" Meredith, Cristina and Lexie all said in unison.

"I thought you said you weren't screwing around with Stark," Yang recalled with a smirk.

"I'm not!" the redhead groaned.

Alex glanced up from his onesie. "Going to his place. _From Here to Eternity_ is playing on cable," he mischievously continued to heckle her. After overhearing another conversation between Stark and April, he felt obligated to use it against her. Changing plans and asking her to come over to his house initially made his stomach churn.

"Oh, yeah. Pants are definitely coming off," Cristina enthusiastically announced.

"Nobody's pants are coming off," April calmly replied, though she felt like she was ready to burst at any second.

"Movie at his place? That's the definition of pants coming off," Meredith implied.

"Virgin's a goner," Cristina teasingly said.

Lexie leaned forward to look at her roommate. "And with an older man too. It's very impressive."

"I am not taking my pants off for Stark!" April shouted, catching the attention of other doctors and nurses sitting at another table. They stared at her with smiles on their faces after overhearing her outburst. She immediately gazed down at her onesie hoping to become invisible as quickly as possible.

Alex smiled to himself, feeling satisfied with humiliating her. It wasn't that he wanted to intentionally hurt the woman he longed for, but he figured if he could input unpleasant thoughts into her head, then maybe she would realize that hanging out with the Chief of Pediatric Surgery was a bad idea after all. Nurses would likely gossip about her and he knew she would hate that because of how insecure she could be at times.

He listened to her call out Jackson and Lexie, who were on their way out for a "consult". They were barely slick as they left the room. The new couple had been having sex nonstop since they started dating. Alex hated to admit it, but he was jealous of Avery. The pretty boy was getting laid on a daily basis, while he wasn't even reaching first base.

Because he was busy fawning over the nerdy woman sitting beside him. April remained silent, trying to finish her onesie design. Her cheeks appeared slightly flushed and she seemed pissed. A part of him slowly started to regret giving her so much crap about Stark. She just wanted somebody to love her, but did it have to be the creepiest dude in the hospital?

Maybe Stark wasn't the creepiest, but he was still a creep in Alex's mind. He shuddered at the thought of April actually taking her pants off for their superior if she was willing to go that far with him.

She noticed he was staring at her and grew even more irritated with him. "What now, Karev? Stop looking at me!"

Meredith watched as April left the station with her onesie. She looked over at Alex, whose eyes followed their roommate until she walked out of the room. "Are you ever going to tell her?" she inquisitively asked. "This isn't first grade. I highly doubt pulling her hair will give her the idea that you like her."

"She'd probably call the cops on your ass," Cristina jokingly said. "You are so jealous of Stark. Pathetic."

"Dude, shut up," Alex replied through gritted teeth. "I'm not jealous."

"You know Hell has frozen over if Stark might potentially be getting some action and Alex isn't. He's one-upping you in the sex department. How sad is that?"

"Kiss my ass, Yang. There's no freaking way Kepner loses her v-card to that douche," he scoffed, shaking his head.

"So, why do you have feelings for her again?" Meredith curiously asked, raising her eyebrow at Alex. "You two have nothing in common. She constantly annoys you at home _and_ she's not your type at all. I mean, I think April's a great person in her own weird and anal retentive way, but… I don't see you two working out. Both of you get on each other's nerves all the time."

Cristina nodded her head in agreement. "You'll break up after one day," she nonchalantly added. "We wouldn't even be able to place bets on you two because you'll be done before we can."

"Whatever. You guys don't know crap," he mumbled, standing up after he finished his own onesie. Alex approached Arizona and handed her his artwork. "Here you go. Scrubs. Can I leave now?"

"No. Not before we have a little talk, Karev," the peds attending firmly stated. She brought him to the entrance of the room and brightly grinned. "Why haven't you made a move on Kepner yet?"

He nervously laughed and placed his hands on his hips. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Arizona pointed at the plastic tiara on her head. "Yeah, and I'm thoroughly enjoying myself at the moment," she sarcastically replied. She folded her arms and sighed. "I have eyes. And ears. I use them both and I'm fully aware that you've got a thing for Dr. Kepner. I like to people watch, especially you. Staring at her all the time like a lovesick pit bull, I'm surprised by you."

"Why? Because you think I'm not good enough for her like everyone else does?" Alex glumly questioned. "Look, I already heard it from my friends, so save whatever pep talk you have in store for me."

"I was going to say I'm surprised by you because you're usually a person who does what he wants and doesn't give a rat's ass about what everyone thinks," she confessed and playfully nudged his chest. "C'mon, you're turning into a peds surgeon. We're hardcore. Cowards aren't hardcore. So, man up, Karev."

He sighed as Robbins walked away from him. She had a point. As a guy who didn't take crap from anybody, he had been acting like a wuss for over a month. Leave it to the only other perky person he knew to give him a virtual kick in the ass. He was done being the bystander.

* * *

By the end of her shift, April was ready to go home – to Meredith's. After putting a ton of thought into her unusual situation with Stark, she opted to break the news to him that she only wanted to remain friends with him. For a while, she had enjoyed his company. The one month of having dinner with the peds attending once or twice a week was the longest she had spent time with a man who was genuinely interested in her since… medical school. Unfortunately, her feelings weren't mutual, at least from the romantic perspective.

The good Grinch had resorted back to being the mean, old Grinch after she had apparently broken his little heart. But if something didn't feel right, she couldn't force herself to continue it. She partially hated herself for letting Alex and the others' teasing play a role in the demise of her and Stark's friendship. Instead of watching a movie with him, she made plans to watch it alone at the frat house while also reminding herself of how depressing her romantic life was.

Walking out of the hospital, the redhead slipped her hands inside of her jacket pockets as she headed to her car. On her way there, she passed by the trailer. Her roommate sat on the steps of the entrance, munching on the snacks he stole from the baby shower earlier.

"Going to Stark's?" he called out to her. She paused, blankly staring at him before rolling her eyes and walking again. Alex jumped up onto his feet and chased after her. "Hey, Kepner. Wait up for a minute."

April slowly spun around on her heel. "Yes?"

"Uhh… want a beer?" he offered.

"No, Alex. I don't want a beer," she sternly answered. "This whole day has been awful, okay? You can stop making jokes about Stark and I because I stopped whatever he thought we were doing. Just spare me the teasing for the rest of the night, please."

He slightly frowned at her. "I uhh… I've been keeping this bottled up inside for quite some time and there really is no easy way to say this. I don't even know if you'll freaking believe me. I mean, I can't even believe it sometimes."

She let out an annoyed sigh. "What are you talking about?"

"So, I've acted like an asshole to you for a reason. Well, more than I normally act."

"I haven't noticed a difference, to be honest," she muttered.

Alex ran his fingers through his hair, taking a deep breath as he had trouble finding his words. "I'm sorry, alright? All of the crap I said to you recently and embarrassing you in front of everybody at the shower was because I…" He bit the inside of his cheek as April impatiently stared at him, waiting for him to complete his answer.

"Hurry up. I don't have all night," she demanded. "I'm exhausted and I want to go home."

"Ah, screw it." He grabbed her by the waist and firmly kissed her lips. She seemed to be caught off-guard at first, but she eventually relaxed against him. He pulled his head away from her, a small smile forming on his face. The redhead appeared dazed as she gently bit down on her bottom lip. "That's what I wanted to say without actually having to say it."

"That you wanted to kiss me?" April sheepishly asked.

Alex guffawed at her interpretation. "That I dig ya. I just don't do the romantic crap, so I thought I'd get to the point or whatever. I'm a jerk who thinks you're worth it," he confessed, making her smile. "There. I said it. Robbins can't call me a coward anymore after tonight."

"Umm… are you still willing to give me that beer?"

He awkwardly held out his hand and she gladly grasped it. Taking her back to the trailer, he felt relieved that she hadn't slapped him across the face for impulsively kissing her the way he did. Maybe her feelings for him had never disappeared, he thought.

The sudden change in their relationship was new and different. He really hoped they could prove the naysayers wrong and last for more than a day.

* * *

**Let me know what you think please ;)**


	7. Boundaries

**As always, thank you for the reviews! I really appreciate your feedback :)**

**Enjoy!**

* * *

Alex had woken up in one of the best moods of his life. Not because he had gotten laid – he knew the impatient person in him would have to wait a little longer for that – but because the woman he wanted was finally his. The pining and the envious behavior eventually paid off for him after he admitted his feelings to April. It took balls in his mind. He wasn't one to easily do that for anybody, but she was the type of person who was willing to listen. Maybe that was why he had fallen for her, he thought.

They hung out in front of his trailer, drinking beer and acting awkward around each other. Neither of them quite knew what to do next after he had kissed her. She preferred they keep their new relationship a secret until both of them figured everything out between them. He agreed, mainly to avoid the jokes and teasing from Meredith and Cristina for the time being. Once they knew what they meant to each other, then they could be a couple publicly.

After spending a couple hours relaxing and sobering up, April had gone home to the frat house to sleep. The inexperienced and shy sides of her were definitely not ready to share a bed with a man, even if it was just to sleep at night. But she had fallen asleep with a smile on her face.

The guy who seemed to loathe her the most actually wanted her. She couldn't be more elated that Karev, of all people, had feelings for her. Real feelings that didn't involve just scoring an easy lay in bed.

However, their cloud nine moment had been short-lived. Torres and Robbins were involved in a serious car accident. The orthopedic surgeon suffered the worst of it. Her multiple injuries put herself and her unborn baby in danger. Throughout the morning, the surgeons were crammed inside of an OR trying to save her life. The situation was so serious that the Chief called in Addison Montgomery to fly in from California. Alex had spent time comforting his mentor and cleaning up the cuts on her face, while April was busy assisting the attendings and checking on Callie in the ICU afterwards.

It was going to be a long day, maybe a week for everyone if the attendings couldn't figure out a safe plan for Callie and the baby.

April walked into a supply closet to stock up on materials for Torres' room. It was possible she would be spending the night in an on-call room just in case her assistance was needed at three in the morning. All hands were on deck, including the residents, so she hoped she would be able to sneak away for a half an hour to go home and grab some new clothes to change into for the following day.

She felt a set of arms slide around her waist and she froze in place. "Please be Alex."

"Who else would it be?" Alex softly chuckled and kissed her cheek. "Any other guy and I'd have to kick his ass. Saw you walking in here, so I thought I'd follow. Are you busy?"

"No. Dr. Montgomery gave me a break, so I'm just gathering supplies for Callie's room."

He grabbed the supplies and put them back on the shelf. "Do it later," he instructed, taking her hand and leading her out of the closet. Stepping into the hallway, they immediately let go of each other's hands to avoid any stares.

"Where are we going?" she timidly asked. "I mean, is this appropriate right now? Torres is-"

"Is she stable?"

"For now, but-"

"Pretty much everyone is keeping an eye on her. If she's not coding, we're okay," Alex insisted, opening the door to an on-call room. He immediately closed the door after she joined him inside, then he removed his lab coat and tossed it onto the floor. "Take yours off."

April's eyes widened. "W-wait. What?"

He smirked at the redhead. "We're not having sex if that's what you're thinking. Just take it off."

She slowly removed her lab coat and neatly hung it on the coat rack beside her. "Okay, so what now?"

"You can't possibly be that clueless," Alex teasingly said before he placed his hands on April's waist and kissed her. She grew more comfortable with him, resting her hands against his cheeks as he deepened their kiss. He carefully brought her to the bed and laid her down onto her back.

Their morning had been stressful, so a break away from reality was necessary. Plus, they hadn't been able to spend time alone since arriving at the hospital a few hours earlier. Their coworkers had occupied the locker room at the same time they did and once Callie arrived in the back of an ambulance, all of their attention was on her and the baby.

April softly gasped as Alex's lips traveled down to a sensitive spot on her neck. His hand slipped underneath her scrub top causing her to squirm beneath him. He quickly got the hint and lifted his head up. "Okay, before you start rambling about how we're not having sex even though I already said we weren't, is the touching not cool with you?"

"Umm… well, touching is nice. I'm not against the touching," she stated, nervously laughing. "You can touch as long as you don't go too far with it."

"So, how far is _too_ far?" he curiously asked. "Below the waist, inside of your pants? Can I at least grab your boobs?"

Her eyes wandered to the side as she bashfully smiled. "Uhh, boobs are okay… but pants stay on."

"What about scrubs?" Alex pulled his scrub top over his head, tossing it aside. He wore a black tank top underneath, but even then he caught her eyes averting away from his upper body. Her cheeks had turned a rosy shade of red. "Dude, you can't even look at me barely topless?"

"N-no. It's not that. It's just I…" She paused and chewed on her lower lip. "It's not that I _don't_ want to look at you. I mean, I want to, but then I start to think about certain things… that I'm not ready to do yet, especially in an on-call room."

He laughed out loud. "In other words, you're horny."

April playfully rolled her eyes and lightly slapped Alex's shoulder. Horny was a way to put it, but she personally preferred not being so blunt about it. Her boyfriend- maybe boyfriend, they hadn't gotten that far into the conversation yet, was an attractive man. He didn't have that pretty physique Jackson had, but that wrestler body and badass attitude reminded her of a couple of farmers' sons she knew back in Moline.

And his feelings for her were mutual, unlike with Stark. She was also surprised by how patient he was being with her. The redhead had fully expected him to grow tired of her hesitance and ditch her in the on-call room, but instead, he wanted to know where he could touch her. It was almost gentleman-like considering who she was making out with.

"How about you just kiss me again?" she sheepishly asked.

A smug smile formed on Alex's face as he lowered his head to kiss her. He desperately hoped she would let him remove her scrub top, but the boob grabbing was good enough for him. And he loved the way her legs naturally wrapped around his waist. How he could withstand all of this without ripping her clothes off, he had no idea, but if he had a good thing going with a woman for once, he didn't want to screw that up.

* * *

The attendings continued to disagree on a treatment plan for Callie and the baby. Every suggestion thrown in would either potentially kill their colleague or the baby and they all wanted to save both. For the past hour, they were inside of a room bickering without any viable solutions. And their residents were simply waiting around for orders.

April and Jackson approached Alex, Meredith and Cristina, who were watching the attendings from outside of their small conference room. "Have they decided what to do next?" the redhead asked curiously.

"Nope. They're still arguing inside," Meredith answered and sighed. "Going in circles. One option would kill Callie, another would kill the baby or both."

"Well, she's still stable, so that's good. Bailey's watching her right now," she informed them. "Can you believe it was just yesterday we were celebrating at her baby shower and now Torres' life is hanging by a thread? I don't understand why this had to happen to her."

Alex stuffed his mouth with potato chips. "It's the price you pay when you work at Seattle Grace Mercy Death," he mumbled. "Bombs, shootings, a freakin' deadly icicle – I'm just waiting for a wrecking ball to come crashing in to put me out of my misery."

"Hey, that icicle was one of the best things to happen to me… except for the part when it impaled me," Cristina bitterly replied. Her eyes narrowed after she noticed a dark mark on April's neck. "Kepner, is that a hickey?"

"Huh? What?" April thought she had strategically adjusted her hair to cover the love bite Alex left behind. The pale complexion of her skin made the hickey stand out like a sore thumb. She tried to brush her hair against her neck to hide it. "I-I I don't know what you're talking about. It's a rash."

Jackson pulled her hand away and chuckled at the sight of the obvious mark on the side of her neck. "You do have a hickey," he pointed out. "Did you and Stark…"

"No! We didn't!" she panicked. "I was _not_ with Stark last night."

Meredith snickered. "Is that so? I thought watching _From Here to Eternity_ at his house was the plan," she recalled, then she quickly shrugged and smiled. "What did I tell you? Pants came off."

Cristina approached April with a smirk on her face. "Honestly, I wasn't expecting that from you, but I'm actually glad to be wrong this time." She playfully bumped her hip against hers and imitated cheesy porn music with her voice. "Bow-chicka-wow-wow! Kepner finally got some last night."

The laughter from her friends was unbearable because she desperately wanted to blurt out to everyone that the hickey came from Alex. However, she wasn't ready to announce to the world that Evil Spawn was her boyfriend- maybe boyfriend. They really needed to talk about that, she thought. It annoyed her that he had joined in on the teasing, but she understood why he did it. Still, the fact that Cristina and the others believed she lost her virginity to Stark was humiliating enough. Gossip spread so fast in the workplace that it would be impossible for her to stop it from reaching the peds attending.

"I haven't seen Stark all morning," Alex noted, grinning at April. "Did your worst nightmare happen? Did he die?"

"You would love that, wouldn't you?" She retorted, angrily walking past him. "At least I got _something_, Karev. What have you been getting lately?"

Cristina grinned widely as she watched the perky doctor stroll down the hallway. "April's got spunk. I guess cashing in her v-card brought out the mean in her," she suggested and laughed again. "Wow. Stark must be really good or _she's_ had this hidden sex kitten inside of her that she finally unleashed."

Jackson shook his head. "I don't think she slept with Stark," he disagreed. "I just… no, I can't picture her jumping into bed with him that fast or _ever_, as a matter of fact."

"Trust me. Nobody wants to picture that image," Alex quipped. He internally cringed at the thought of naked Stark alone. Deep down, he was relieved to know who actually did leave a hickey on April's neck.

"I would know. I'm her best friend. She would've told me," the pretty boy insisted.

"And when it's your turn to share your secrets with her, does she braid those tiny bristles on your head?" Cristina jokingly asked, reaching up and obnoxiously rubbing the top of Jackson's shaved head.

He rolled his eyes and turned to walk away. "Bite my ass, Yang."

"Maybe it was Avery," the Asian woman insinuated after their coworker left. "They're both from Mercy West, he's disgustingly pretty and he's always quick to defend her."

"He's also dating Lexie," Meredith added. "I highly doubt Jackson would cheat on her since they only just started dating. He obviously cares about April, but those two are strictly friends. Who knows? Maybe she did sleep with Stark."

Alex groaned, crumpling his empty potato chip bag. "Stop with the filthy images. Damn," he agitatedly replied, throwing away his trash before he left the twosome alone.

"What's wrong with him?" she asked concerned.

"Oh, he's probably jealous. Also, pissed because Kepner made him look bad earlier," Cristina dismissively answered, then she giggled. "I love mean Kepner."

* * *

At the end of her shift, April slowly sauntered into the residents locker room. She pondered whether or not to drive home to Meredith's to sleep or claim an on-call room. Her plan to sneak away to get more clothes never happened as she spent the majority of her day checking on Callie in the ICU. She had endured being forced to listen to Mark and Arizona practically rip each other's heads off over what the best treatment plan was for the orthopedic surgeon and their baby. And it bothered her that a few nurses had given her suspicious stares. They either noticed the hickey on her neck or someone blabbed about her fictional tryst with Stark. She preferred the first choice.

Sitting down in front of her cubby, April simply stared at her shoes and sighed. Was changing out of her scrubs worth it? A page could arrive at any minute, though she hoped not. It would mean Torres was coding and her legs were sore enough from walking in and out of her room all day. Sure it sounded selfish, but she would feel less selfish if Callie remained stable throughout the night.

Just as she removed her lab coat, her pager went off. She softly groaned as she checked to see what it was, but to her surprise, it wasn't an emergency or an attending requesting her service. Alex had paged her… to meet him in his trailer.

Better than Callie coding, she thought. Leaving the locker room in her scrubs, April rode the elevator to the main lobby and walked out of the hospital. It was a chilly night and it rained again, which was no surprise for the typical Seattle resident. Now she wished she had taken her lab coat with her as she rubbed her hands against her arms on her way to the parking lot. She knocked on the door and waited for a response.

Alex opened the door wearing a forest green tank top and gray sweatpants. "Is your shift over?"

"Yeah, I was about to change and go home to Mer's, but at the same time, I thought about sleeping in the hospital in case I get paged," she answered, visibly shivering. "Umm, can I come in? It's cold out here."

"Well, yeah. That's why I paged you in the first place," he answered with a smirk. April entered the trailer and he closed the door afterwards. "So, uhh… about earlier, you know I was just trying to-"

"I know," she softly responded as she sat down on the small couch. "And you know I was also trying to-"

"I know," he interrupted. Alex slightly smiled down at her. "Sucks you gotta deal with potential Stark backlash, though. Yang seems to think Avery gave you that hickey now. You don't have any sex feelings for him, do you?"

She quickly shook her head. "No, not at all. I mean, I did once, but not anymore. We're friends. He's my best friend."

"This wasn't recent, right?"

"It was during around intern year," April replied, rolling her eyes. "Everybody had a crush on Jackson at some point, but this happened when I didn't know him very well yet. Now, he's sort of like a brother to me. When Charles and Reed died it felt like we were orphaned. We just had each other."

Alex sat down beside her. "Okay, but if he's like a brother to you, you should stop staring at him when he takes his shirt off. It's kind of gross. Besides, you've got a boyfriend now."

A grin formed on her face. He specifically called himself her boyfriend. That was refreshing to hear. "So, you _are_ my boyfriend?" she questioned excitedly.

"Uhh, yeah. I thought we established that last night or did we not?" He folded his arms, half-smiling at her. "Crap, you wanted an official proposal or something, huh? One of those cheesy, 'Will you be my girlfriend?', type of questions? Listen, you already know I'm not the most romantic dude out there-"

"No, it's okay. I'm just glad you think of me as your girlfriend," she shyly replied. "I'm sorry if I sound like a teenager right now. Boyfriends weren't a major part of my high school life… and some of college… and lately."

Alex slowly nodded his head. He could see why she would assume they weren't official. It had only been a full day since they decided to start a relationship, but it was nice to know they proved Cristina wrong. He was confident they could last longer than that – so far. As long as April didn't get cancer or go crazy or get run over by a stampede of elephants, they would be fine. His unlucky streak with love needed to end. He just wanted to be happy with somebody who wouldn't screw him over.

"So… you want to spend the night in here?" he murmured, drawing a wide-eyed stare from her. "My bed is big enough for the two of us and it's more comfortable than the beds in the on-call room. No frisky business, alright?"

"O-okay," she hesitantly responded. "But I don't have a change of clothes and I don't want to dirty your sheets with my scrubs. Oh, and before you say it, I am not sleeping naked."

"That idea actually hadn't popped up in my mind." He laughed as he stood up from the couch. Opening a cabinet near the bedroom, he pulled out a t-shirt and tossed it to April. "Here, you can wear this. And it's clean, I swear."

Even then, the redhead briefly sniffed his black Iowa Hawkeyes t-shirt to be on the safe side. "Just this?"

"I have shorts, but I'm pretty damn sure they won't fit around your tiny waist. That'll cover you up, I promise," he assured her, then he covered his eyes with his forearm. "And I won't watch unless you want me to."

She softly chuckled at how considerate he was being towards her. Despite the fact that Alex was shielding his eyes, April felt compelled to turn around while she stripped out of her scrubs. The t-shirt looked extra large on her, the hem cutting off at her mid thighs. It was long enough to hide her backside, so she didn't feel too uncomfortable about wearing just a t-shirt to bed.

"You done?" he impatiently asked. Without waiting for an answer, he moved his forearm away from his face. Her back continued to face him as she folded her scrubs and set them on the couch. His eyes were drawn to her legs. They were pale, but somehow still sexy in his opinion. She looked quite hot in his clothes.

April spun around, biting on her lower lip and pulling down the t-shirt to try to hide her thighs even more. "Shoot, my toothbrush is in the locker room."

Alex waved his hand as he walked towards a drawer. "Don't worry about it," he insisted, opening the drawer and picking up an unopened toothbrush pack. "I have extras lying around after Izzie-" There was an awkward pause before he cleared his throat. He definitely didn't want to think about his ex-wife at that moment. "Jumbo pack."

"Thanks." Both of them spent a couple of minutes brushing their teeth, then they climbed into bed. April pulled the covers over her legs and remained seated upright, while Alex collapsed face first onto his side of the bed. "Do you think she'll be okay?"

"Hmm?" he hummed into his pillow.

"Torres. You think she and the baby will make it?"

Her boyfriend lifted his head and looked at her. "The attendings know what they're doing. We shouldn't worry right now. We should be getting some freaking sleep." He placed a pillow in between them. "In case you don't want me rolling over to your side, but if I just happen to, you can punch me in the balls."

"One more thing before we go to bed. No more hickeys on my neck," she ordered.

"Are you going to make a million rules for us until we let everybody know we're together?" he irritably asked.

"No. I just don't want you leaving hickeys on my neck. It gives them another excuse to make fun of me," April dejectedly replied. "And I'm not entirely comfortable with you joining in and adding fuel to the fire."

Alex sighed as he sat up on his bed. "You know, we could just tell them all we're together if you want," he offered. "But the sneaking around stuff is pretty fun. I'm not getting laid, but it's still fun. At least you're letting me grab your boobs."

She sheepishly giggled and smacked his shoulder. "That's the most important thing to you after sex, right?"

He leaned forward, gently kissing her lips. "I can think of something that's more important than both of those."

April smiled as she lay down on her back, pulling the blanket up to her chest. "Goodnight, Alex."

"G'night." After turning off the light, Alex lay on his side and shut his eyes. "By the way, I was kidding about punching me in the balls."

"I figured."

* * *

The following morning, April awoke to the smell of something burning. She stretched her arms over her head as she sat up on the bed. To her surprise, Alex was already awake and cursing up a storm in the kitchen area. He was waving a towel over the toaster after he kicked open the door of the trailer.

"Need help?" she asked and yawned.

"Freakin' A!" he yelled out, picking up the toaster using oven mitts and throwing it out of the trailer. Alex used the towel to clear the rest of the smoke inside. "Dammit."

April climbed out of bed and approached her disgruntled boyfriend. "Everything okay?"

He sighed in frustration. Making breakfast wasn't normally a priority of his because he was too lazy and the cereal boxes were always available instead if she hadn't cooked anything. However, he wanted to try to do something different that morning and make breakfast for her. So far, it was a fail. Overcooked the yolk of his eggs, burnt toast. And she had woken up to his crappy attempt to cook.

"I have Cocoa Puffs in the upper left cupboard," Alex disappointedly said. "I wasted the goddamn eggs."

"You tried to cook me breakfast?" she admirably questioned.

"Well, you've done it hundreds of times for me, so I thought I could return the favor, but I failed miserably at it," he answered with a pout. "Sorry. Cooking was never an area of expertise for me."

April rubbed small circles against Alex's chest and smiled. "It's the thought that counts. Thank you for trying," she acknowledged, kissing his cheek. "I'm going to use the toilet. I'll be right back."

While she used the bathroom, he tossed his uneatable eggs into the trash and dumped all of the dishes into the sink. He slumped down on the couch feeling like an idiot and mentally scolded himself because he couldn't even toast bread without burning it. She didn't seem to mind, but he still felt humiliated.

She returned from the bathroom, then she washed her hands and brushed her teeth. After she finished freshening up, the redhead picked up her scrub pants and slipped them on. "Just in case I get paged, at least I'm half-ready," she stated. Alex failed to respond and remained silent on the couch. "Don't feel bad. It doesn't make me think any less of you."

"Did you sleep well?" he asked, changing the subject. "I don't think I rolled over and smothered you last night."

"I did actually," April chirped and sat down beside him. "And I had the coolest dream too. We were all in the OR operating on Torres, but we were singing. It was weird and awesome at the same time. You, sir, had an amazing voice."

"You were definitely dreaming. I don't sing," he scoffed. "I can't hold a freaking tune if my life depended on it."

She laughed and rested her head against his shoulder. "But your voice was sweet."

Alex wrapped his arm over his girlfriend's shoulder and sighed. "And I'm sure it made Yang weep like a bitch baby too," he quipped. "So… are you into Cocoa Puffs or do you just want to grab something in the cafeteria? Either one will be better than whatever the hell I tried to cook."

"We can go to the cafeteria, but not yet. Why not take advantage of the time we have alone together?" April innocently suggested. She grinned when he raised his eyebrow at her. "I just want you to stop pouting."

He cupped her cheek and pressed his lips against hers. "I'm liking you more and more," he huskily said in between kisses, pulling his girlfriend onto his lap. Wrapping his arms around her waist, Alex moved down to her neck, only to receive a slap against the side of his head. "Oww!"

"No hickeys!" she scolded him.

"Remind me not to piss you off for real anymore," he muttered, rubbing his head. In one swift move, he flipped April onto her back causing her to squeal. Climbing on top of her, Alex kissed her again. "Don't forget. I'm a wrestler."

She grasped the back of his head, smiling against his lips. Their time alone, though, was interrupted by their pagers.

"Of course," he mumbled, pushing himself up from his girlfriend. "It had to happen now."

April found her pager and gasped after reading the message. "We gotta go, Alex," she said in a state of panic. "It's Torres."

"Alright, alright. My scrubs are lying around somewhere, but don't-" By the time Alex turned to look at April, she had already left his trailer after changing into her scrub top. "…wait for me." He found his scrubs on the dining table and changed into them as quickly as possible before running out of his trailer and into the hospital.

* * *

**Obviously, Callie survives ;)**


	8. Sneaky Kids

**As always, thank you for the reviews! I appreciate it! :) I had a little inspiration from 10x04 while writing part of this chapter.**

**Enjoy!**

* * *

"Seriously? You're bringing in kids from Africa?" April questioned in disbelief. She and Alex were hiding out in her bedroom and discussing their plans to help them earn the coveted Chief Resident role. While she believed her checklists during examinations would be extremely helpful for everyone, her boyfriend's idea was much more impressive – and also difficult to believe. "You're joking, right?"

He slightly grimaced and fanned himself with his shirt. "Hunt was pressuring me to give him something and Africa kind of just came out of my mouth. Well, also Robbins indirectly gave me the idea and I went with it."

"So, you're sticking with your Africa plan?" She watched him nod eagerly. "Alex, where are you gonna get the money for that? You do know you have to talk to Stark about this since he's currently the Chief of Pediatric Surgery."

"I know I gotta talk to him, but he might loosen up a bit if you seduce him for me first," he jokingly suggested.

April slapped Alex's chest with a pillow. "I can't even get Stark to talk to me. He's apparently very heartbroken over the fact that I rejected him," she complained. "Working with him isn't as enjoyable anymore because he doesn't seem to trust me with anything these days."

"You want me to kick his ass?" he offered, a mischievous grin forming on his face. This time, he wasn't joking. A part of him had always wanted to beat up the peds attending simply for being a jerk. Now that Stark was giving April the douche treatment, it gave him another reason to do it.

"No, don't kick his or anybody's ass for me," she declined. The redhead glanced down at her example checklists and sighed. If Alex was serious about his plan, then hers would look too basic and generic beside his. "Mine is lame, huh? I just wanted to do create something to prevent others from making the mistake that I made and got me fired."

"It's cool and all, but we're all gunning for Chief Resident. I can't tell you that your plan is better than mine," Alex admitted, then he proudly smiled at her. "I mean, c'mon – Africa, April. _Africa_."

April playfully rolled her eyes. "I'll believe it when I see it," she scoffed.

"And when you do you'll be bragging to everyone about how your boyfriend is a freaking genius," he boasted and leaned forward to kiss his girlfriend. Alex lowered her onto her back as he passionately kissed her.

Sneaking around for the past week and a half had been fun considering none of their friends and coworkers suspected they were together. They were all devoting their time helping Callie recover from her injuries to notice a change in the couple's friendship. April especially enjoyed having a secret boyfriend, let alone a boyfriend in general. Although Alex occasionally acted like a jackass to her at work, he unveiled a sweeter side of him when they were alone. It showed he truly did care for her because he rarely let people see his sensitive side.

She knew he wanted more from her, though. Sex was a topic she tried to avoid as much as possible. The moment needed to feel perfect in her mind, not just a random shag in her bedroom. They hadn't even been on a real date yet.

"Alex," she mumbled against his lips. April placed her hands on Alex's cheeks, slightly pulling his head away from her, so she could look at him. "When will you take me out on a date?"

"Uhh…" His eyes wandered to the side as he struggled to answer her question. He wasn't much of a date type of guy, but being with a woman who adored old fashioned romance forced him to have to try eventually. "Like a real date where we both get dressed up and I give you flowers and crap? Or the kind of date where we go out to eat somewhere less fancy, then hopefully, have sex afterwards?"

"Well, I would feel more comfortable if we went out on a date first before I… give up the goods," she awkwardly stated and chewed on her bottom lip. "And I want it to be special because it's my first time."

Alex furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. "So like, you want scented candles or whatever? But I gotta put my foot down at cheesy love songs playing in the background. I can't handle having sex with you and listening to Boyz II Men at the same time."

April gently slapped his shoulder and smirked. "I'm a sucker for romantic gestures, but I'm not _that_ sappy." She placed her hand against his chest. "It doesn't have to be overly romantic. I just want my first time to be something I'll always remember and not because it was terrible."

"It won't be terrible. Trust me," he assured her with a kiss.

A knock on the door startled the redhead and she pushed him off of her. "Uhh, who is it?"

"It's me," Jackson called out from the other side. "Can I come in, please?"

"Umm, just a second! I'm… I'm naked!" April gestured towards the floor and whispered, "Hide under my bed, Alex."

Her boyfriend climbed off of the bed and lay flat on his back on the floor as he shimmied underneath her bed. He quickly regretted listening to her because the space was ridiculously tight, especially with the crap she had stashed there as well. The closet would have been a better choice, but it was too late to change plans. April was already at the door greeting her best friend. Alex wasn't sure what Avery wanted, but he hoped he would scram soon. The pretty boy was killing his game, even though he remained stuck in between first and second base.

Jackson's weight on the bed caused the mattress to shift, slightly decreasing the little room Alex already had below. On the bright side, his girlfriend most likely had the cleanest hiding space in the entire world. No dust to inhale and choke on. It was surprisingly comfortable after a minute.

"What's up, Jackson?" she cheerfully asked, organizing the paperwork on her bed.

"I'm living in a dream world, right?" her best friend dejectedly responded. He grabbed one of her pillows and lay flat on his back, sprawled across the bed in front of April. "This thing with Lexie. It's too good to be true, isn't it?"

She furrowed her brow in confusion. "What are you talking about? You've been happy with her from what I've seen… and all of the mid-sex interruptions I've unfortunately witnessed in the house."

Jackson rested a forearm behind his head and sighed. "I know, but she's still in love with Mark."

"Well, to be fair, Mark and Lexie _were_ together for quite some time, long before we started working with them," April pointed out. In the back of her mind, she wondered if their roommate had been using Jackson as an attempt to get over the plastic surgeon. It made her feel like an awful best friend because she wanted to see him happy. His crush on the brunette woman had been lingering for a while and he finally got his wish, yet doubts were beginning to arise. "Let's put it this way, she's always going to have feelings for him, but that doesn't mean she can't develop deep feelings for you too."

"Sometimes I swear, I catch her giving him longing looks," he claimed, staring at the ceiling. "Or am I just paranoid?"

"You're probably paranoid, Jackson. Don't let Mark get inside your head. I mean, he's gorgeous and all…" She paused when he glanced back at her unimpressed. "Torres is his best friend and after what happened recently, Lexie just wanted to offer some support. That's all."

"Why am I not surprised by how understanding you are?" he replied with a half-smile. "I can always depend on you to be the voice of reason between us."

April shyly smiled back at him. "That's why you're friends with me, right?" she jokingly questioned.

"Nah, c'mon. You know why I'm friends with you." Jackson sat up on the bed, placing his hand against her knee. "I'll always be friends with you even if you marry Stark somewhere down the road."

She immediately slapped his hand and laughed. "I'm not dating Stark," the redhead retorted. The fact that he would assume she and the peds attending could reach that milestone was almost offensive. "We were never dating, okay? And he's not my type. I like… husky men. Guys who remind me of the boys I couldn't have at home on the farm."

He softly chuckled. "Is that why you liked Karev? I personally envisioned you with a polite man who won't hesitate to carry your shopping bags at the mall. Basically, someone who worships you and doesn't treat you like crap, which could actually be a lot of guys not named Karev."

April forced herself to laugh knowing Alex was directly below them listening to every word said. A part of her wanted to pull him from under the bed and squeal, "Surprise! Karev's my boyfriend!", but that would make for an awkward situation with Jackson. Her friend was very protective of her, especially against their roommate.

When she thought about it now, would Jackson be happy for her? Or would he advise her to stay away from Evil Spawn?

And if she and Alex ever reached "Meet the Parents" level, would hers accept him? He wasn't anything close to what Joe and Karen Kepner ever pictured her bringing home to the farm one day, but maybe they would eventually see the good side of him that she saw. And her boyfriend originally came from the Midwest. He had attended Iowa, while her father was an Ohio State alum. They could bond over Big Ten memories, athletic stuff. Bonus points for everyone.

"I liked Alex because of other things too," she insisted, biting down on her lower lip. "Things you probably won't understand."

"You're right. I won't," Jackson groaned, stretching his arms over his head as he slid off of her bed. He approached the door and turned around to face April. "You'll find your guy, alright? There are a lot of men who would be stupid to pass on you. Anyway, it's late. We should get some sleep. Early shift tomorrow."

"Goodnight and thank you," she acknowledged with a smile.

"I should be thanking _you_. 'Night, April," he said before leaving her bedroom.

April leaned towards the edge of her bed. "Alex, you can come out now," she quietly called out to him. However, she didn't receive a response from him. Peeking underneath her bed, she found her boyfriend snoozing away on the floor. "Really?"

She hopped off of her bed, bending down and pulling on Alex's hand. He was a heavy guy, so she used all of the strength she had in her petite body to drag him out from underneath. Her grip loosened with one last heave causing her to let go and fall backwards onto her butt. The small noise was enough to wake him up.

"What the hell?" he mumbled to himself, rubbing his eyes.

"You fell asleep under my bed," she replied amusingly.

Slowly sitting up on the floor, Alex smirked back at her. "How do you make such a claustrophobic space so damn comfortable? Do you clean underneath your bed with freaking magic bunnies or something?" He extended his hand, waiting for her to grasp it before they stood up together. "What did Avery want?"

"Same old story. He's more hung up on Lexie still having feelings for Sloan than Lexie herself," she imperturbably answered, gently pushing him towards the door. "Since you're half a zombie at the moment, I suggest you go to sleep on a real bed."

"I can't sleep in here with you?" He already knew the answer to that question and rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah. I know, we can't. Whatever. Is the coast clear outside?"

"It should be."

Alex opened the door, sticking his head out into the hallway to check for anybody roaming around. It was empty, so he quickly stepped out. "See you in the morning," he murmured, leaning forward and giving her a peck on the lips.

April closed the door, leaning back against it with a smile on her face. She truly admired how she continued to see a different side to him every day. Maybe he _was_ the kind of guy who would carry her shopping bags for her. He just didn't know it yet.

* * *

Two weeks and counting, Alex and April's budding relationship remained under wraps. Their colleagues still hadn't noticed a change in their behavior when they were around each other. It hadn't changed drastically, but he was more careful with his words. He continued to act like a jackass at times and in return, she delivered her own insults towards him. Their teasing turned into fun for them. Sometimes they made bets to see who could outdo the other in the insult department.

Both of them spent the bulk of their rotations in Pediatrics. Although April partly suffered under Stark's service, she didn't mind working for him if it meant she was able to use her spare time spending it with Alex in an on-call room. They weren't having sex yet. She continued to stay true to her word about her first date rule. While she hadn't guaranteed him sex after their first date, he wanted to set one up as soon as possible. But work and competition for Chief Resident left little room for that.

And he also had no idea what to do for a first date. Planning a real date wasn't his thing and he was embarrassed to ask his friends for suggestions. It would only lead to them interrogating him about who his special lady was, which he didn't care for. He also knew _she_ wouldn't appreciate it either. It was nice keeping everything to themselves without anybody acting nosy.

"Karev!" Robbins called out as she glided towards her favorite student on her Heelys. Those shoes were a hoot to Alex, but whenever he spotted a kid wearing them, he wanted to stick his leg out and trip the little runt. The blonde attending stood beside him at the nurses' station. "Little Mikey in 3105 needs his dressings changed, so could you do that for me, please?"

"Yeah, sure. No problem," he answered while jotting notes in a chart.

Arizona continued to grin brightly, albeit she appeared confused at the same time. "Really? No, 'Why can't you ask a stupid intern to do that crap?' from you? Are you actually in a good mood today?"

"Uhh, if that's what you want – why can't you ask a stupid intern to do that crap?" Alex sarcastically replied. He closed his chart before looking at his mentor. "I can't be in a good mood?"

"No, you're Karev. You're rarely ever in a good mood. Unless you do have them, but your face never shows it," she quipped, laughing at her own joke and ignoring the slight scowl on his face. "So anyway, did you ever take my advice?"

"About what?"

"Kepner. With everything that's happened – the car accident, Callie and Sofia… your women woes slipped my mind. So tell me, have you manned up yet?" Arizona inquired, raising her eyebrow at Alex. "You know, I think she may be the perfect woman to tame your wild ways."

"Shut up. I'm not wild," he scoffed.

She softly laughed as she placed her hand on his shoulder. "I'm your boss. You can't tell me to shut up," the peds attending cheerfully scolded him. "You still haven't answered my question, Karev. I'm supposed to meet with Callie in her room in five minutes and I don't want to upset her by being late. In fact, I'll blame you for it."

He rolled his eyes and shook his head. "No," her student muttered. "Not yet."

Arizona sighed. "What am I gonna do with you?"

"You're supposed to be teaching me about surgery, not counseling me on my love life."

"I'm also allowed to badger you about things you need to take care of because I've got your back," she insisted, then she pointed over her shoulder. "I can tell Kepner about your feelings myself if you're too scared to be honest with her. I'm pretty sure I saw her in 3110 on my way over here."

"I can tell her myself, okay?" he irritably replied, turning away when he noticed April walking towards the nurses' station with a couple of charts.

Arizona caught on, spinning around on her heel and smiling at the redhead. "Ah, Dr. Kepner. Just the person I've been looking for," she greeted the fourth year resident.

"Really?" April asked with a puzzled expression on her face. After working at Seattle Grace Mercy West for over a year now, she and the peds attending hadn't interacted often. She wasn't even sure if they had spoken directly to each other ever, despite seeing each other's faces every day.

"Yes," she confidently stated, resting her forearm against the countertop and leaning against it. "There is a nurse on this floor who I think is your type. His name is Kyle and he's very handsome-"

"I… I'm done with nurses," the perky woman hesitantly answered. She noticed the frantic hand motions from Alex, who stood behind Robbins. "After my horrible date with Bruce, I'm not interested at the moment – with dating. Anybody. I'm not looking to date anybody right now."

Arizona squinted her eyes and twitched her lips to the side as she tried to read April's facial expression. Her coworker was difficult to read for once as she smiled back at her. She had sensed Alex was lying to her, but she couldn't get either of them to crack. "Hmm, okay. I'll be on my way now," she said, walking past her student. "Karev, remember to change those dressings."

April waited for the blonde doctor to leave before she whispered, "What was that about?"

He scratched the back of his neck, slightly grimacing. "I think she almost figured us out."

* * *

"It's clear," Lexie softly said, waving her arm at her colleagues as they sneakily brought Callie's hospital bed to the NICU.

They had successfully snuck the orthopedic surgeon out of her room during the first week of her recovery, so she could visit her daughter, Sofia. Another secret trip wouldn't hurt, especially after another week of healing from her surgeries. While the Latina woman was mostly restricted to bed rest, they could do her a favor by pushing around her bed again.

Meredith and Cristina pushed Callie's bed from behind, while Jackson anchored the front. The hallways were fairly empty as the night grew older. Their shifts had ended, yet they agreed to wait a couple of hours and help their coworker before heading home. The first visit almost never happened, but the pretty boy used his wits to keep Bailey distracted long enough for his friends to slip past her. Thankfully, she had already gone home this time.

Like they had previously done, the residents set Torres' bed beside the window. The blinds were shut, though, forcing Jackson to walk around to open them. Oddly enough, the door to get into the NICU was locked.

"Hey," he gently knocked on the door to avoid disturbing the sleeping preemies inside. "April or Alex, open the door. We're waiting for you guys."

April snickered as she pulled away from Alex. They had used their time alone together to sneak in a smooch or two… or twenty. "I should probably unlock that door. You take care of the blinds." She walked towards the door and opened it. Jackson stood in front of her with a suspicious look on his face. "Sorry. I didn't realize the door locked behind me when I got here."

Her best friend slowly nodded. "It's fine. Torres is ready to see Sofia."

"Oh, we already have her next to the window," she stated, watching Alex pull open the blinds. "See?"

Alex briefly checked baby Sofia's vitals, while Callie bonded with her daughter through the glass. Something about watching him interact with babies was a major turn on for April. Just men and babies in general made her heart flutter. If she ever saw her boyfriend holding a baby in his arms, for whatever reason, she was certain she would melt into a giant puddle.

"We're heading to Joe's afterwards. Want to come?" Jackson asked, but the redhead was too distracted to respond. "Earth to April."

"Huh?" she finally replied after her friend lightly nudged her. April whipped her head towards Jackson with a forced smile. "Did you say something?"

"Joe's," he chuckled. "Are you in? Where's your head been at the last few days? You seem to zone out a lot."

She awkwardly twirled her hair with her finger and laughed. "What do you mean? It's been a grueling week for me, so I guess I tend to space out to escape for a minute. But Joe's sounds great. Who else is going?"

"The usual gang," Jackson answered, glancing over at Alex. "And Karev can come too. I'm sure he's been dying to sleep with the latest desperate woman he could lay his hands on at the bar."

The comment annoyed April, but she couldn't exactly defend her boyfriend without revealing the truth to her best friend. She simply rolled her eyes and approached Alex. "Everyone's going to Joe's after work. Want to come?"

"Yeah, whatever," he casually replied. "But if Pretty Boy makes another snide remark about me, I'll punch his face in."

"Don't worry about him," she calmly advised. "He'll be too busy drinking and flirting with Lexie."

* * *

Perhaps hanging out at Joe's with their coworkers wasn't the greatest idea after all.

April couldn't remember when she stopped enjoying herself – when the woman with the long, blonde hair approached Alex and offered to buy him a drink or when the woman with the oversized breasts handed him her phone number. It didn't matter to her after the four rounds of tequila shots entered her system. She wasn't a big drinker, but when tequila joined the party it was obvious to her peers she was having a rough night.

Alex had seen it before, that day when he snooped and read her red notebook. Then that sleazy douche tried to pick her up and he stopped him. But that was when they weren't involved and he was more of a friend helping another friend. They were dating now, so his concern for her was much deeper, especially whenever he noticed a random man passing by and checking her out.

He had rejected the blonde _and_ the giant breasted woman, yet that hadn't stopped her from drinking away her jealousy. She never specifically said it, but her body language showed her envy. Drunk April was quite hot in his mind, but he knew the post-drunk fest wouldn't be as pretty.

"One more," she sloppily ordered, slapping her hand against the table. The drunk woman raised her empty shot glass and waved it in the air. "One more of this… thingie."

"Umm, how about no more of those thingies?" Meredith snatched the shot glass away from her roommate and set it aside. She had trouble understanding what drove April to become so plastered. Her coworker had been in a cheerful mood all day and it suddenly dropped at Joe's. "Let's get you some water."

Jackson laughed to himself as he stood up. "I'll get it. April, stay put," he instructed before leaving their booth.

"He's not my mother," the redhead scoffed and stumbled as she climbed over Alex's lap. "I have to pee."

Lexie furrowed her eyebrows in amusement as they watched April walk towards the exit instead of the women's restroom. "Someone should go get her before a random pervert does."

Of course, Alex volunteered himself and chased after his girlfriend outside. He found her cautiously climbing the stairs leading to the street and caught her just before she could fall backwards. "Whoa there," he chuckled, assisting her up the last few steps. He gently pressed her against a wall trying to keep her upright. "You need to sober up."

"You need to get out of my face," April slurred, playfully pushing his face away with her hand. She giggled as she covered her mouth. "Your breath stinks."

"I'm 90% positive it's _your_ breath," he countered, rolling his eyes. "Jesus, you're a mess right now."

"Then, go find the bimbo blonde and big boobies and have a threesome with them," she agitatedly replied and pouted. Glancing down at her shoes, she rubbed her eyes. "They're prettier… and more confident and… a bunch of other stuff that I know I'm not."

Alex shook his head and cupped her cheek. "What the hell are you talking about? Those chicks got nothing on you," he assured her. "You're a freakin' doctor. Who knows what those two do for a living? That already makes you a thousand times better than them. Besides, the one with the huge boobs was nasty. I mean, did you see the size of those jugs? I'm surprised she can walk without falling over."

April softly laughed, placing her hands against her boyfriend's chest. She appreciated the long sleeved shirt he wore because it outlined his pecs. "You have nice boobs."

"Uhh… I prefer we don't call them that," he responded with a laugh.

"I'm sorry," she mumbled, gazing up at him with puppy dog eyes. "I'm drunk."

"Yeah, you are," Alex confirmed, quickly nodding his head. "But you're a hot drunk."

Without hesitation, April grabbed him by his shirt and kissed him. Her confidence seemed to increase a bit with the help of some liquid courage. He certainly wasn't complaining. His hand grasped the back of her head while his other hand slipped underneath her shirt. Sober April was already a fine kisser, but the other version of her – the intoxicated side – sent his hormones to its breaking point.

But dammit, he had to leave it all in his pants.

A set of hands grabbed Alex from behind and he winced after being slammed against the wall. "Dude! What the fuck?" He turned around to see a very pissed off Avery staring back at him. "Break my nose, why don't you?"

"I'll be glad to," Jackson snarled, raising his fist and preparing to throw the first punch.

"No, no! Stop!" April intervened and stepped in between the two men. She giggled as she forced her best friend to set his hand down. "It's all good, Jackman. Don't beat him up, okay?"

"_Okay_? April, he was taking advantage of you _again_!" he angrily shouted. Jackson pointed his finger at Alex. "Putting your hands on her when she's sober is one thing, but when she's clearly wasted… man, I am going to kick your ass harder than I did the first time."

She waved her hands in front of her face. "No advantage of the taking, I swear."

He huffed as he ran his hand along his shaved head. "You're not making much sense right now, so step aside and let me handle this myself."

"Cut the crap, Avery. We're dating, you idiot," Alex admitted, scowling at the pretty boy. He could have easily used one of his wrestling moves to escape his grip, but opted out of it to avoid a real fight in front of April. "Will you freaking let go of me? This is another new shirt and I sure as hell don't want you ripping this one too."

Jackson slowly released Karev, though he wasn't entirely convinced by his confession. What could she possibly see in the guy who normally treated her like crap?

He looked at April, who was drunkenly smoothing out the wrinkles on her boyfriend's shirt. "You two are… dating?" he skeptically asked. He watched her grin and nod proudly. "Seriously?"

"He gives me hickeys," she blurted out randomly, burying her face against Alex's chest and laughing.

"I'm gonna take her home now, alright?" Alex wrapped his arm around April's waist and escorted her past a dumbfounded Jackson.

"Hey, Karev!" the pretty boy called out. After he turned around, Jackson pointed at his eyes and back at Alex. "I'll be watching you more closely now. You better be good to her."

"Whatever. You don't intimidate me," he retorted.

April burst into laughter in the parking lot. "I'm better than you. No, I'm better than you," she mockingly said to herself while she imitated two different male voices. "You men are so funny. You and your testosterone."

Alex smirked as he helped her into his car. He knew his poor girlfriend wouldn't be laughing in the morning. At least he would be around to take care of her massive hangover.

* * *

**Who doesn't love drunk April? ;) Next chapter will include their first date!**


	9. First Date

**Thank you for the reviews! I must say writing for a ship that isn't involved in any of GA's current train wrecks is both a blessing and curse lol.**

**Enjoy!**

* * *

A month of dating without having gone out on a real date, Alex felt some pressure on him. April wasn't just any girlfriend. She was traditional and a sucker for romance, something he hadn't exactly fulfilled yet. On a positive note, she hadn't been nagging him about their first date. Perhaps, she wanted to be surprised, he thought. Their first date was supposed to be significant or whatever.

But he was clueless about what type of date to plan. All he knew was it had to be good enough to end the night with sex… not that he wanted her to know that was his priority. He did want to make an effort in impressing her with a successful first date. One couldn't exactly have a do over with first dates.

Alex wasn't completely enthusiastic about seeking advice from someone. Asking Jackson was out of the question. His roommate still hadn't warmed up to the idea of innocent April dating a scumbag like Karev. The pretty boy was suspicious of his intentions. He had a hard time believing he was genuinely interested in his best friend. All it took was one bad move and he would be reacquainted with those Avery fists.

Meredith and Cristina were also terrible options. Since word spread regarding Alex and April's relationship, they constantly teased him for dating someone who didn't easily put out for him – or more like ever. A guy who loved sex dating a woman who had never experienced it? Didn't add up to either of his friends. The fact that he managed to remain abstinent for over a month baffled them even more.

Maybe there was one person who would understand his problem.

"Dr. Robbins!" Alex called out to the peds attending and chased after her down the hallway. He matched her stride as they walked side by side. "I uhh… I gotta ask you for something. Advice, actually."

"Oh, yeah? Is it about your Africa proposal?" she eagerly questioned with a bright smile. "Because I have to say I'm impressed with your plan. I'm like a proud mother who taught you well."

"No, it's not that." His idea to bring over sick children from Africa hadn't been running as smoothly as he had hoped. The funding for it had been a bust so far after Stark refused to lend him a penny for his efforts. He really wasn't sure where that money would come from. "It's about Kepner. Well, dating stuff."

Arizona smugly grinned to herself. "Are you going to tell me about how I'm awesome because I figured you two out before you admitted you were dating each other?" she gloated. "I always knew you were lying to me, Karev. You know why? Because I'm awesome."

He quickly rolled his eyes, slipping his hands inside of his lab coat pockets. "Yeah, whatever. Anyway, I… I want to take her out on a decent first date, but I have no freakin' clue what to do. Any ideas?"

"You're asking me for first date advice?"

"I don't do first dates that often," Alex muttered. From his recollection, the last real first date he had been on was with Izzie and that happened during their intern year. And that first date led to his inability to perform in the bedroom, which eventually led to idiotic cheating and well… he preferred not to remember that. "What should I do? April, she's probably gonna be expecting something great and I don't know how to be great, at least at planning dates."

"Are you stressing out over this?" the blonde surgeon asked curiously, raising an eyebrow at him. "You're flustered over a first date. It's quite… adorable. Is adorable the appropriate word?"

Stopping in the middle of the hallway, he groaned and slightly scowled at his mentor. "Dude, I'm serious right now. We have the night off tomorrow. I don't want to screw this up and be a crappy boyfriend."

Arizona sighed, gazing up at the ceiling as she quietly ran ideas through her head. "Try something relaxing and fun at the same time. This is April Kepner we're talking about. I think she's open to anything you find extremely cheesy," she suggested, then she gasped. "Oh! Miniature golf."

"Miniature golf?" Alex repeated slowly, scrunching his nose. "That's… that's a high school date."

"Karev, if you're going to be picky about this, then you'll never figure out a date. Besides, an innocent game of mini golf doesn't necessarily mean you have to be innocent the entire time," she implied, smirking back at him. "Let's say you want to help her out with her swing…"

A mischievous grin formed on his face. "You've done this before, haven't you?"

"Maybe once or twice in college," Arizona sheepishly replied. She patted Alex's shoulder and turned to walk away. "Give it a shot. I bet you'll be thanking me later for the idea."

Alex briefly watched the peds attending slide down the hallway using her Heelys. Miniature golf gave him an excuse to sneak in some naughty groping. He wondered why he hadn't thought of that immediately. His mentor was a freaking genius. Then again, he hardly doubted Robbins when it came to useful advice. She was probably his and April's biggest cheerleader at the moment. At least someone didn't think their relationship was a joke.

With a plan set, he just hoped his girlfriend would agree to the idea. He tracked her downstairs in the pit hoping she wasn't too busy for a quick chat. April stood by the nurses' station chatting with… Avery. Not exactly who he wanted to see her with just when he was ready to pitch his date proposal to her. Whatever, he thought. It was silly to act like Jackson was the most intimidating person on the planet. He decided to pretend the guy wasn't even there.

"Hey, got a second?" Alex intruded, stepping in between April and Jackson. The latter appeared annoyed to see him. "I uhh… I figured out what we could do tomorrow night."

"Do you mind?" the pretty boy hissed behind him. "We were talking."

April softly laughed. "It's okay, Jackson." She couldn't help but feel excited to see Alex since they weren't sharing shifts in Pediatrics that day and first date news was good news. "We're having our first official date."

"Where are you taking her? Joe's?" he scoffed.

Alex shot a glare at his roommate before facing the redhead again. "Mini golf."

"Wow," Jackson guffawed, shaking his head. "That's really, really lame."

"Oh my gosh, I _love_ mini golf!" April chirped and clapped her hands together, drawing a confused look from her best friend. She grinned widely at her boyfriend as she let out a high-pitched squeal. "I haven't played mini golf since high school. I'm looking forward to it already."

"Really?" Alex was slightly taken aback by her excited response. He hadn't expected her to react so positively to an idea he didn't even come up with. Since she was thrilled about it and he made Jackson look stupid at the same time, he wasn't going to complain.

She nodded, playfully tugging on the lapels of his lab coat. "I know you probably would prefer something less… childish, but this is going to be fun. Are we having dinner first elsewhere or what? Oh, are we going old school by eating greasy, cheap corndogs?"

He slightly shrugged with a half-smile. "If that's what you want. Whatever."

April heard Owen calling her from afar and grimaced. "I have to go, but thank you for setting up our date. It means a lot to me." She hopped onto her tip toes and kissed Alex's cheek. "I'll see you after work."

Alex proudly smiled as his perky girlfriend walked away with a bounce in her step. He turned around to face Jackson, who remained unimpressed. "I have a feeling after tonight, she'll have another reason to appreciate mini golf, especially if she needs my help," he stated with a wink. "Know what I mean?"

Jackson inhaled sharply as his coworker left, a cackle escaping his mouth. The thought of Karev's filthy hands all over April disgusted him. He almost wanted to follow them on their date, string Lexie along and claim a double date would be even more enjoyable. On the other hand, he didn't want to be an ass of a friend and potentially ruin his best friend's date. Still, it was with Alex. _He_ didn't deserve a successful first date in his mind.

"I hate that guy."

* * *

Alex was amazed by how popular miniature golf seemed to be. It was almost crowded on a Friday night, though he excluded the group of teenagers who chose to hang out there doing nothing for no reason. And they weren't the oldest couple there like he had anticipated. April spent a couple minutes gushing over the 70-something old duo who were on a date as well. He didn't mind – until he realized that same couple were in front of them on the course.

Eighteen holes plus a slower moving couple ahead of them? And they were only on the fifth hole.

He sat down on a nearby bench lightly tapping his forehead against the tip of his putter. It would likely take a freaking year for them to finish _half_ of the course. Alex didn't despise the elderly. They just made him cranky. And it was painful trying to hide his impatience in front of April. Her eyes were focused on the old couple, smiling brightly at how adorable the woman's husband treated her. He knew exactly what his girlfriend was thinking. She was probably envisioning themselves in their shoes, wrinkled and gray and taking ten minutes to place the golf ball on the tee.

And he felt like a douche for wanting to walk away to buy a corndog.

"Do you think they'll notice if we just cut in front of them and skip over to the sixth hole?" he murmured close to her ear. "I mean, we could almost be halfway done by now."

"I don't want to cut," she softly groaned and smiled at the elderly couple. "That would be awful. Look at them, they're having a blast and we could easily ruin their night if they see us cutting."

Alex rubbed the top of his head, a grimace forming on his face. "But they're taking _forever_," he complained. "Seriously, by the time we reach the tenth hole, they'll be closing the damn place."

"Oh, you're exaggerating," April playfully scolded him, nudging his side with her elbow. She leaned close to his ear and whispered, "Patience leads to very wonderful rewards, you know."

"What kind of rewards are you referring to?" he asked inquisitively.

_Please be talking about sex._

She giggled and bit down on her bottom lip. "What do you think?"

He smirked as he leaned in for a kiss. Somewhere inside of that naïve woman was a sex kitten waiting to be released from her cage. "Would it be too much to ask if we could uhh… take a break? I think that windmill at hole nine is big enough to obstruct us from everyone's view."

April's eyes slowly widened and she opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. She felt a rush of warmth fill her cheeks before she forced a laugh. "Umm… there are _kids_ here," the redhead bashfully responded.

"But dammit, you look freakin' hot in that sweater," Alex huskily noted. She stared back at him skeptically because he had always found her choice of attire rather quirky and dorky than hot. However, since he began seeing her in a different light he actually found her collection of buttoned sweaters attractive – or maybe it was the thought of peeling it off of her body whenever they finally pushed past third base that turned him on.

She opted to wear a magenta sweater over a white top and those tight, blue jeans he loved on her. He, on the other hand, felt like a dope because he decided to wear a navy blue shirt that he had worn hundreds of times, maybe even sometime earlier that week. And he forgot to shave, so he sported a patch of dark fuzz on his face.

The stubble on his chin tickled April's neck as he placed gentle kisses on it. While Alex had his personal struggles restraining himself from tearing her clothes off on a daily basis, April had her own set of internal problems. Eventually, she was going to lose her virginity, but it was a matter of _when_ she felt ready to go through with it. But when her boyfriend kissed her neck the way he did, it was difficult to think clearly. Whether it would happen that night or not, she had yet to decide on that. Fortunately for her, the old couple in front of them had moved on to the next hole.

"Our turn!" she chirped, jumping up onto her feet and approaching the tee with her purple golf ball.

The hole's design was a little tricky and it required players to hit the ball along a curve for it to reach the hole. April's nerdy side resurfaced as she calculated her projected outcome, making Alex snicker. It was the perfect opportunity to lend his assistance. Pushing himself up from the bench, he walked towards her and set his putter aside.

"Ya know, instead of getting scientific on me, how about I help you out instead?" he offered, standing behind her and wrapping his arms around her waist. His hands securely gripped her wrists as her back rested against his chest. "It's pretty simple, really. It's mini golf for crying out loud."

"Are you doing this as an excuse to get fresh with me?" she suspiciously questioned.

"What kind of guy do you think I am?" Alex scoffed. His girlfriend looked over her shoulder at him with a raised eyebrow. He shrugged as he grinned back at her. "I'm serious. I'm not a pervert."

April stepped forward and chuckled. "I'm good, Alex. I don't need your help."

"Okay, whatever." He felt a little defeated by her rejection, slightly pouting as he scanned her backside. Her butt was merely inches away from him, so he reached down and grabbed it with both hands just as she was about to swing. She gasped and accidentally hit her golf ball with too much force. They watched it fly over the entire length of the hole and land directly on top of a random person's head. "Whoops."

"Alex!" She grimaced as she waved her arms at the poor victim. "I'm sorry! It wasn't me!"

"Oh, it was all _her_," Alex insisted, pointing his fingers at April as he laughed behind her. He grunted after she spun around and slapped his chest as hard as she could. "Hey, now. No violence on this date, okay? I think your physics calculation was way off, by the way."

The annoyed redheaded woman placed her hands on her hips. "Wait until later tonight. You're going to wish you hadn't done that, Karev," she warned. "I am totally beating you at this game and I'm going to gloat afterwards."

He rolled his eyes thinking she was simply being a tease, but his brief moment of groping had turned on a competitive switch inside of her. She had taken the rest of the course seriously, like trauma certification with Hunt. For every hole she beat him in, she would celebrate with a small victory dance that he felt partly embarrassed to be a witness of. And when it was his turn to putt, she was almost unbearable. Her heckling had gotten underneath his skin, so much that his ability to concentrate was impossible.

If April had been a random chick he was forced to take out on a date, he would have ditched her at around the eighth hole.

But the worst moment happened at the eighteenth and final hole. It was a crappy design in his opinion. The last hole was a giant house and the only way to win was to hit the ball into a tiny space located on the bottom of the front door. Nobody ever won this round, at least Alex hadn't seen anybody do it.

Of course, his own girlfriend showed him up by successfully hitting her golf ball into the hole. An alarm that made his ears hurt rang loudly as April celebrated with another dance. She twirled around in a circle, pumping her fists in the air as she squealed excitedly.

"I won!" she shrieked, glancing back at Alex, who stood nearby furrowing his eyebrows. He never expected to take their mini golf date so seriously, but now, he was pissed that he lost to her. "Aww, don't be such a sourpuss."

A young boy, probably about eight or nine years old, passed by and pointed at the brunette man. "Loser," he taunted with a grin on his face.

"Shut up," Alex muttered, scowling at the little runt as he walked away.

"C'mon, he's just a little boy." April's arms draped over his shoulders and she leaned in, stopping before their lips touched. She enjoyed giving her boyfriend a hard time throughout their date, but she did feel a little guilty for embarrassing him. "Remember what I said about gloating earlier?"

"No, I must have missed that part while you were _gloating_ during the whole freaking game," he sarcastically replied.

She chewed on her lower lip as a grin slowly formed on her face. "Well, because I won… I get to be on top."

A smile appeared off the corner of Alex's mouth. His frustration towards her started to fade away as he grabbed her hand and led them towards the booth to drop off their putters. "We're leaving now."

"But- but I have to redeem my prize first."

"It's just a gift certificate to come back here for a free game. You don't need it," he dismissively replied.

Especially after April had beaten him at mini golf, Alex definitely refused to return for another game. For the next date, he was content with an old fashioned, romantic dinner.

* * *

Parked in front of Meredith's house, Alex had grown too impatient to wait until they were inside to finish their date. He and April had slipped into the backseat of his car, making out like teenagers who were toying with their curfew. She straddled his lap, her fingers digging into his scalp as she passionately kissed her boyfriend. His hands roamed all over her back and mostly camped out on her rear end.

It was a side of April he hadn't seen before. They made out all of the time, but her domineering side was driving him nuts. One wouldn't immediately assume she was a virgin based on the way she was kissing him at that moment. Or maybe she had simply grown more comfortable around Alex. In the beginning of their relationship, she seemed quite hesitant to let him slip his tongue into her mouth. Her lack of boyfriend experience showed whenever his hands touched her more sensitive areas on her body.

Her lips moved down to his neck and he smugly grinned as she gently gnawed on the area just below his ear. His hands worked on the buttons of her sweater and he groaned when she teasingly nibbled on his earlobe.

"Freakin' A," he mumbled, finishing her buttons and pushing the sweater off of her shoulders. She was painfully teasing him with innocent foreplay, but he was ready to move forward towards home plate.

Alex realized April had been wearing a tank top underneath her sweater, so he caught a nice glimpse of her bare shoulders. He immediately attacked her left shoulder with his lips before slightly pushing her back and dropping his face into her cleavage. She softly moaned when his teeth grazed the top of her breast.

She raised his head and firmly kissed his lips again. His hands slid underneath her tank top. Soon after, his fingers reached for the back of her bra. Before he could unhook it, she pushed herself off of him and adjusted her sweater.

"What are you doing?" he asked perplexed as she opened the car door. "Whoa, wait a second! Where are you going?"

April climbed out of the car and smiled back at him. "Goodnight, Alex!" she cheerfully replied.

He watched her close the door with his mouth partially dropped open. While she entered the frat house, he remained seated in the backseat of his car trying to process what had just happened. All of that kissing and groping only to be blown off without a warning?

"Holy shit. What a tease," the fourth year resident blurted out, glancing down at his lap. Alex tilted his head back against the cushion, cursing both out loud and inside of his head. He never saw it coming. Nobody had ever teased him like that before.

Did he do something wrong? Or was that her plan all along?

It could have been revenge for selling her out after she hit that bystander with her golf ball. He was too shocked to even be mad about the situation. They lived under the same roof, yet he didn't have enough will power to follow her into her bedroom and confront her for being a ridiculously hot tease.

And he needed an extra five minutes to relax before he could show his face again. Little Buddy Karev was _not_ pleased.

* * *

The next morning, April had woken up in a perkier than usual mood. With the exception of her golf ball mishap, she thought her date with Alex went well. No vomit on her clothes or embarrassing moments that would haunt her for the rest of her life. She had fun. It was the most fun she had in a long time, maybe the best first date ever. Then again, there weren't a lot of memorable first dates to compare it to.

But those dates didn't matter anymore. She had a boyfriend, one who surprisingly treated her well after behaving the complete opposite not so long ago. It felt like she was on top of the world.

"You're certainly glowing today," Arizona enthusiastically pointed out while she and April washed their hands in the scrub room following a colostomy. The redhead was beaming when she reported to her service and continued to act that way throughout the surgery. It was hard not to notice her uber cheerfulness. "Obviously, your date with Karev wasn't a disaster because I highly doubt you would be this happy after we just attached a poop bag to a tiny human."

April shyly smiled. "It was really nice. Alex and I played mini golf last night. I thought that was really sweet of him because I never imagined him to be that type of guy," she explained. "And even though I beat him- well, I whooped him badly, we still managed to… he has nice hands."

The peds attending shared her excitement, grinning back at her resident. She gave herself an imaginary pat on the shoulder for playing a hand in the couple's successful date. "Oh, so you two-"

"No!" she interrupted and nervously laughed. "We uhh, we did things. Just not… all the way."

"I see," Arizona murmured, slowly nodding her head.

"But it was still a lovely night without sex involved." April finished washing her hands and dried them with a towel. "We were in the back of his car. That's not exactly the place where I want to lose my virginity."

"Understandable," the blonde woman answered with a chuckle. "Sounds like Karev may be boyfriend material after all."

She sighed as she tossed her towel into a bin. "I really like him. That almost sounds crazy, doesn't it? I mean, he used to think I was the most annoying person in the world. Maybe he still does sometimes, but I must be doing something right if he hasn't moved on to another woman."

Arizona walked out of the scrub room with April. "You and I both know that Alex has always had a good person inside of him. He's starting to show it more. I think that's sweet," she gushed. "He must be so happy to be with someone who cares about him."

* * *

"It was awful," a distraught Alex grumbled, resting his chin on top of the counter of the nurses' station. He briefly recalled last night's date to Meredith and Cristina. Both women were highly amused by his disappointment. "My girlfriend is the world's biggest tease."

He had purposely left the frat house early that morning to avoid running into April. It still hadn't fully sunk in yet that she led him to assume they were finally going to have sex only to ditch him in his car after a steamy makeout session. When he finally managed to walk into Meredith's house he went straight to his bedroom and hid underneath the covers.

"Was it really awful? April sure looked happy this morning," his roommate noted.

"Of course _she's_ happy. She's the one who demanded she be on top and toyed with my hormones," Alex bitterly stated, shaking his head. "It felt like I got laid without the best parts included."

"Well, she _is_ a virgin, Alex. Maybe she's afraid of being bad at it," she implied.

Cristina snorted. "Or she realized you probably screwed dozens of women in the backseat of your car. I wouldn't even want to _sit_ in the backseat, let alone makeout there." She smirked as she pointed at the hickey on his neck directly below his ear. "And it looks like she tried to take a bite out of you. Wow. Kepner's a vampire. The pale complexion makes more sense now."

Alex scowled at his coworker. "Bite me, Yang. She's actually one hell of a kisser… and a tease." He stood upright and rubbed the back of his neck. "Normally, I could drop a chick for making me wait this long to have sex. I'm a dude with needs and this dude wants to get laid."

"So why don't you? You should've known what you were getting into with April," Meredith reminded him.

"Because I can't. Avery will kick my ass again. Actually, no. He'll murder me and then bury me beside O'Malley in the freaking cemetery." He sighed in frustration. With any other woman, he would have moved on already. However, he couldn't flat out dump April for what happened the night before. "I can't do it."

"You can't do it because you care about her. It's more than sex for you." She smiled as she gazed back at Cristina. "April _is_ the first person he's truly liked since Izzie."

"Mer's right. Don't be an ass because you're not having sex on a daily basis. Kepner could actually end up being the best sex of your life," the Asian woman advised. "I wonder if she's a screamer."

"Shut up," Alex irritably replied. He turned around when he heard April's high-pitched voice calling out his name. It was too late to run away like a coward. She practically skipped towards him as her ponytail swayed back and forth. "Hey."

His girlfriend greeted Meredith and Cristina before she faced him. "There you are. I haven't seen you all morning." She slipped her hands into his, interlocking their fingers together. "Can I just tell you how amazing last night was? I haven't had so much fun since… I don't know, but it was one of the best dates I've ever had!"

Alex forced himself to smile. "Seriously?"

"Yes! Thank you for an enjoyable night," April happily acknowledged, throwing her hands up against his cheeks and kissing his lips. "You're the best."

_Crap_, he thought. It donned on him that maybe she never considered sex after their date at all. She didn't seem to realize how much it bothered him that their makeout session in his car ended abruptly. He was apparently Boyfriend of the Year, yet he stood in front of her thinking he didn't deserve her. She was appreciative, whereas he wasn't.

"Heard you two had a good time last night," Meredith chimed in.

"Yeah, you made Karev into your own personal bitch. I'm proud of you, Kepner," Cristina quipped, to Alex's dismay.

"Umm… I didn't," the redhead awkwardly replied. She raised her eyebrow at her boyfriend. "What did you say to them?"

Alex shook his head and placed his hand against April's lower back. He led her away from their friends as quickly as possible. "Nothing. Yang's being her annoying, usual self. So, uhh… you really thought last night was fun?"

"I did. Why?" Her face slightly dropped when he remained silent. "You didn't think it was?"

"No, it's not that. It was good, but something was lacking."

"What do you mean?" she worriedly asked. "W-were you hoping to have sex?"

They stood in the middle of the hallway as she waited for him to answer her. He rubbed his hand up and down her arm and half-smiled at her. "We forgot to eat those greasy corndogs," he admitted, making her laugh. Alex leaned forward and gently kissed her lips. "Are you free for lunch?"

"At the moment, yes. Unless, Robbins pages me."

"Cool," he smoothly said, taking her hand and walking to the cafeteria with her.

Getting upset over the lack of sex was pointless, he realized. April was one of a few things that seemed to be going well for him so far. And Meredith was right. He did care about her. More than he ever thought he would.

* * *

**Hope you're enjoying AK2's progress so far! :)**


	10. Home Run Slugger

**Thanks for the reviews! :)**

**Enjoy!**

* * *

Weddings always made April sappier than she normally was. She loved attending weddings. Nothing made her heart flutter more than watching two people in love exchange vows and become husband and wife. She was the maid of honor at her older sister Libby's wedding four years ago. Her younger sister Kimmie would be getting married over the summer and she was going to be a bridesmaid. Weddings made her cry. She wasn't afraid to admit that.

For once, it was nice to attend a wedding with a real date. A date who was also her boyfriend. That rarely happened to her. It was their first time dressing up as a couple, though April wasn't sure if Alex considered it a date. He had mostly looked forward to the free food and booze, while he let her do her thing as the unofficial photographer of Callie and Arizona's wedding.

She had been especially excited about the fact that a lesbian wedding meant two bouquets would be thrown, making her chances of catching one a tad bit higher.

Alex watched by the bar as the single or unwed women gathered on the dance floor for the bouquet toss. A part of him hoped neither bouquets would land in the hands of his girlfriend. Catching the bouquet supposedly meant the lucky woman would be the next person to walk down the aisle. Marriage was definitely not on his mind, not after… he never wanted to think about it.

And he and April were still fresh and new, about two months in and the whole boyfriend-girlfriend thing was fine with him. Their relationship continued to lack sex, which he learned to accept. He had his impatient moments, but he didn't want to rush her.

He slightly cringed as most of the women screeched simultaneously after Torres tossed her bouquet over her shoulder. With so many hands flying up in the air, he couldn't make out April from where he stood. A nurse came out victorious with the first bouquet making him relax a little. When it was Robbins' turn women were fighting for position and created a dog pile for the last bouquet.

Somewhat unsurprising to him, April escaped the pile with the peds attending's bouquet in her hands. Her feisty side won out as she jumped up and down in celebration. She excitedly approached Alex with a wide grin on her face. "I almost had to bite somebody to get this."

"At least I have an idea what you'll do if another woman makes a pass at me," he quipped and sipped his beer.

"Maybe this one will be the charm," she chirped.

"How many have you caught?" he curiously asked, raising an eyebrow.

April sheepishly smiled. "This is my fourth one."

Alex grimaced, taking the bouquet from her and tossing it behind him. She scowled back at him, placing her hands on her hips. "That stuff's just a myth or whatever anyway."

Rolling her eyes, the redhead glanced back at the dance floor. Guests were dancing again, so she tugged on his free hand. "Fine, but you have to at least dance with me once. You haven't danced with me at all," she whined, pointing her finger at him. "And don't even make a wisecrack about my dancing."

"I don't dance," he muttered.

"Alex…"

He finished the rest of his beer, setting the glass on the bar counter. "Okay," he groaned, following his girlfriend to the dance floor. "Just one dance and that's it."

Fortunately for him, it was a slow song, so he didn't have to move much. Alex wrapped his arms around April's waist, while she comfortably draped her arms over his shoulders. She raised her camera at them and grinned. "Smile!" After taking the picture, she checked to make sure he actually smiled. A half-smile from him was good enough. "Hmm… that one's a keeper."

"So, uhh… Hunt says you're in the running for Chief Resident as much as I am," he stated. "You know, because I actually pulled off my Africa project, I just don't want you to get your hopes up for nothing. You could congratulate me now…"

"Don't get ahead of yourself," she answered with a smirk. Although in the back of her mind, she thought her boyfriend had Chief Resident in the bag. Nobody could outdo what he had done, which exceeded everyone's expectations of him. "Until Hunt announces who gets it, it's fair game."

"Sure, okay," Alex skeptically said, eliciting another eye roll from April. He moved his head close to her ear and whispered, "But just so you know, you'll be getting special Chief Resident privileges from me. Anytime you want them."

She softly laughed at his arrogance. "Oh, yeah? What if _I'm_ Chief Resident?"

He soothingly rubbed her lower back and slightly smiled. "I would hope you'd give me special privileges too."

Resting her cheek against his shoulder, April slowly inhaled the scent of Alex's cologne. He didn't dress up often, but he looked handsome in his suit. And he hadn't pouted for most of the day, which was a plus – except around Meredith that morning, though she had no idea why. He actually complimented her dress, despite his dislike for floral patterns.

Alex was a good boyfriend and she thought maybe he had been patient long enough. The wedding was a special occasion, giving her an idea that she knew he would approve of. She finally felt ready for that next step.

"Umm… I was thinking," she started, nervously biting on her lower lip. "What do you think about tonight?"

"What about tonight?"

She briefly scanned her surroundings hoping nobody could hear them. "Sex," she whispered. A smile immediately formed on his face as she gently pulled on his tie. "Let's go home."

He grasped her hand, casually leading her away from the dance floor. "Uhh, do we need to say our goodbyes to Torres and Robbins? We'll see them at work in a day or two anyway."

"Well, it would be polite if we did," she insisted, but he continued to walk away from the wedding party. "Wait, I want a piece of cake to go!"

Alex bit his lip as he turned around and rushed towards the half-eaten cake. He sloppily cut a chunk of the strawberry filled wedding cake, slapping it onto a paper plate. April had retrieved her purse and coat by then and waited for him just outside of the large canopy. When he met up with her they quickly walked to his car and climbed inside.

During the drive home, the redhead was anxious. Her mind couldn't focus on one particular thing. She tried not to think about the possibility that she could be terrible in bed and be known as the worst sex ever. Her nervousness went unnoticed.

"Relax," he calmly said, placing a hand against her knee to stop her leg from jittering. "It won't be like what happened in the on-call room. I won't rush you or anything."

After they arrived in front of Meredith's house, both of them hurriedly walked towards the front door. Each of them had a key and ended up fighting over the same key hole. "Alex, move!" April retorted, using her body weight to shove him aside. He simply snickered at her feisty side and pushed the door open for her when she managed to unlock it.

She scurried up the stairs, cake in hand, as Alex chased her from behind. Upon entering her bedroom, she set the plate on her desk before turning around and smiling at her boyfriend. He removed his jacket, dropping it onto the floor as he approached April. Cupping her cheeks, he gently kissed her, but he still wanted to ensure she wanted to go through with it.

"You're positive you want to do this, right?" he mumbled against her lips, his hands moving down and around her back to reach for her zipper.

"Mmhmm," she hummed, reaching up to undo his tie. "You have umm… with you? You have something?"

"In my wallet. I always keep one in there," he answered, causing her to slightly pull away and raise an eyebrow at him. Alex forced himself to laugh and he shook his head. "Uhh, which doesn't mean I've been restocking it or whatever. I'm a dude. Gotta be prepared, ya know?"

"Right. Okay, yeah. I know what you mean." April fidgeted with the buttons of Alex's dress shirt. She only finished half of them when he decided to pull it over his head for a faster removal.

He slowly pulled down her zipper as he devoured her neck. Her fingernails lightly clawed his back while soft moans escaped from her mouth. His hands pushed the straps of her dress off of her shoulders and watched it slide down to her feet. He scanned her petite body, smirking at the matching light pink bra and panties. It suited her, though.

"Cute," he teased. His girlfriend slapped his shoulder in response, then he caught her off-guard by picking her up and nearly tossing her onto her bed. Alex impatiently removed his pants before he climbed on top of her. His lips traveled from her neck, making a brief pit stop into her cleavage. Despite seeing a countless amount of breasts in his lifetime, the man had an obsession with hers.

April's fingers gripped Alex's hair as he kissed his way down to her abdomen. She softly gasped when his lips touched an area where no man had ever been before. "Oohh…" she squeaked. Initially, it was awkward, but she quickly found herself enjoying it.

Her boyfriend couldn't help but feel smug listening to the sounds coming out of her mouth. He pushed himself up, using his elbows to prop himself above her. Her breathing was heavy as he brushed aside strands of her auburn hair away from her forehead. "Doing alright over here?" he playfully questioned.

"Yes," she chuckled, pressing her hands against his cheeks. "I'm… I'm ready."

"Just remember to relax," he murmured and placed another kiss on her lips. Normally, he was up for fast and dirty sex, but with April, he wanted her to be comfortable. She was a freaking virgin. He couldn't remember the last time he had devirginized a woman, so he had to be careful. "You'll be fine."

* * *

The next morning, April woke up to sunlight creeping in through the blinds. She lay flat on her stomach with her blanket covering her from the waist down. Burying her face into her pillow, she smiled as she recalled the previous night in her head. She was no longer a virgin having joined the club that the majority of her coworkers and friends were a part of. Alex had surprisingly acted like a gentleman towards her. Everything he did… felt perfect.

His hands, his lips, his… she giggled like an immature schoolgirl thinking about Alex's assets. Pulling the covers up to her chest, she rolled over to see if he was awake. However, all she found was open space. Her boyfriend wasn't snoozing away beside her making her worry.

Did he walk out in the middle of the night? Was she actually dreadful and he couldn't tell her?

Her worries disappeared when her bedroom door opened and Alex quietly snuck inside thinking she was still asleep. He stood in front of her in his boxers, yawning and scratching his head as he closed the door. Turning around, he paused to see her staring at him concerned.

"What?" he asked, climbing onto the bed and crawling towards her. "I had to take a leak."

"I… I thought you fled because I was horrible last night," she bashfully replied. "Nevermind. Stupid me."

"You were definitely not horrible," he assured her, tilting up her chin with his thumb. Alex scooted behind her and firmly wrapped an arm over her stomach. He left a trail of kisses along her shoulder. "Were you really a virgin?"

April elbowed his side and laughed. "Yes! Why would I lie about that?"

"Because you were… well, you did some things that didn't scream virgin to me," he answered in amusement. "And I mean that in the nicest way possible. Last night was freakin' incredible. You were incredible."

He leaned in to kiss her, but she moved her head away. "I have to pee," she stated, reaching for her panties on the floor. After she slipped them on, she opted to wear Alex's large dress shirt. The look on her drew a whistle from her boyfriend, making her laugh. "I'll be right back."

April stepped out of her bedroom and tip toed down the hallway. She wasn't sure if anyone else was awake, but she didn't want the creaky hardwood floors possibly catching someone's attention. The house was silent, which meant everyone else was still asleep, leaving the bathroom all to herself. She took her precious time, using the toilet first before washing her hands and brushing her teeth. Staring into the mirror, she noticed a pair of hickeys on her neck. But the more embarrassing hickey was located on the top of her right breast.

If her mother ever saw her this way, she would probably faint. Her most innocent daughter was not so innocent anymore. The thought made her shyly smile to herself after she rinsed her mouth.

Leaving the bathroom, she froze in place when she came face to face with Jackson. Her best friend appeared half-groggy as he slowly walked towards her direction. April tried to play cool as she casually met him in the hallway, pulling down Alex's shirt to cover herself up as much as possible. He glanced back at her as she walked past him after barely acknowledging him.

"Uhh, good morning?" he awkwardly greeted her, furrowing his eyebrows when she turned around to face him.

"Oh, hi!" she replied, grinning back at him. "Bathroom's all yours."

Jackson rubbed his eyes as April returned to her bedroom, shutting the door behind her. He remained confused, wondering why something seemed off with his friend. It finally clicked in his head seconds later.

Sex hair.

He clenched his jaw as he walked towards her bedroom and opened the door. The pretty boy shielded his eyes with his forearm when he saw her straddling Alex's lap and his roommate's shirt sliding off of her shoulders. "April, no!" he shouted.

The redhead screamed, hiding behind Alex as she buttoned the shirt. "Jackson, get out!"

"You actually let him do _this_ to you?" he retorted, blindly approaching the couple. "Put your real clothes back on, okay? This- this isn't right. It's gross! It's Karev! Were you drunk last night?"

"No!" She scowled at her overprotective friend. "Will you _please_ get out of my room? As you can see, Alex and I are having a private moment and I don't need you treating it like a rape case!"

"Yeah, Avery. What's your deal?" Alex joined the conversation. "This isn't some one night stand. In case you haven't noticed, we've been dating for a couple of months now, so your need to defend her is getting ridiculous. Back off already."

Jackson suddenly lost his temper and yanked Alex off of the bed, throwing him against the wall. The ruckus in the bedroom woke up the rest of the house. Footsteps in the hallway grew louder, while the two men tussled beside April's bed.

"What the hell is going on?" Meredith irritably asked as she appeared in the doorway. She exchanged glances between April and her two other fellow residents and connected the dots. "Oh…"

"Is there a fight I have to break up?" Derek arrived and his eyes widened at the sight of a half-naked April. He covered his eyes, turning his back towards his coworkers. "And Kepner is… not wearing a lot of clothes."

Grabbing one of her pillows, April covered her face with it. Her best friend and boyfriend were acting like immature teenagers, while the rest of the household slowly began to discover her loss of virginity. The news would most likely spread at the hospital within an hour or two. She thought she might as well call her parents now and brag about having sex for the first time.

She was too embarrassed to move from her place on the bed. Someone else would have to break up the fight between Jackson and Alex. Neither Derek nor Meredith seemed to want to. The latter found the entire situation amusing.

Lexie was the last person to arrive, running upstairs from Jackson's pseudo bedroom. She quickly approached her boyfriend and squeezed herself in between him and Alex. "I have no idea what's going on, but it has to stop," she ordered, turning her head to look at April, who remained partially hidden behind her pillow. The brunette woman spotted her bra on the floor and gasped. "Oh… my… God. You lost _it_?"

"Okay, yes! I'm not a virgin anymore!" April blurted out, groaning into her pillow. "And Jackson is being a total idiot about it, so can you please get him out of here?"

"Wow… and with Alex," she replied, visibly amazed by the breaking news. Her redheaded roommate glared at her, then she started forcibly pushing Jackson towards the door. Lexie grinned back at April on their way out. "We'll chat about this later."

After the group left them alone, April jumped off of her bed and locked the door. She sighed in frustration as she stared at a disgruntled Alex, who rubbed the back of his head. "Are you okay?"

"Freaking Avery," he muttered with a pout on his face. "Alright, I've taken enough of his crap and I didn't retaliate, but the next time that guy puts his hands on me, I'm not holding myself back. He's due for an ass kicking. You know, I'm starting to think he secretly has the hots for you. No dude is that overprotective unless you're related and you two are totally not."

"No, he's just- he's my best friend. Jackson's looking out for me… a little too much," she admitted, rolling her eyes.

* * *

Jackson furiously paced back and forth in his room, while Lexie sat on his bed and quickly grew bored of his anger. Seeing April sloppily wearing Karev's nasty dress shirt made him cringe. It wasn't like her, he thought. She didn't seem like the type of woman who would give up her v-card to the grossest man he knew, disregarding the fact that they were in a relationship. Two months was too soon in his mind. She was a grown woman, but dammit, it still bothered him.

"He put his- inside her-" He could barely get the words out as he made strangling motions with his hands. "I can't believe this."

Lexie blankly stared at the pretty boy. "Are you finished?" she impatiently questioned with her arms folded. "And seriously, what is the big deal? April finally had sex. Good for her. I'm actually quite proud she took this momentous step, like we should celebrate at Joe's later."

"But it was _Karev_. C'mon, you slept with him. You know how gross he is."

"Actually, he's not bad…" She sheepishly grinned when Jackson stopped moving around and scowled at her. "Oh, but hey! I got you to stop pacing. I thought you were gonna dig a hole into the floor with your feet."

"I'm serious, Lex. This isn't a good thing."

"Well, right now I'm really weirded out by you," Lexie confessed. "Your overprotective side with April? It gets a little creepy. I understand she's your best friend, but you're not her father. That's how you treat her sometimes, like she's your daughter and frankly, I think it's disturbing. When you kicked Alex's ass at that party it was understandable. Now, it's odd. What is it about April that you feel the need to protect her all the time? And don't pull the Mercy West card on me."

He placed his hands on his hips, inhaling sharply as he pursed his lips. "It's not April, okay? I don't trust Karev. That's all. Sure, he's good to her now, but what about in a few months? No matter what, he is still a douche. I don't want her getting hurt."

She reached out and grabbed Jackson's hands. "If you want my opinion, I think Alex is actually trying to make things work with April. She seems happy and his mood isn't the worst every day. Besides, they're… pretty cute together."

Jackson grimaced. "I'm going to pretend that didn't just come out of your mouth." A knock on the door forced him to open it. His best friend stood outside wearing a plain gray t-shirt and flannel pajama pants. A much more endearing outfit than earlier in his opinion. "Oh, thank God. You're wearing your own clothes again."

"Can we talk, please?" April demanded, furrowing her brow at him. She looked over his shoulder at Lexie. "Just for a minute."

Their roommate immediately got the hint and quietly left the room. The two Mercy Westers were secluded inside, though the redhead appeared annoyed with him. "I'm mad at you- wait. Scratch that. I'm infuriated with you, Jackson Avery."

He seemed caught off-guard by her comment. "Why am I getting the full name scolding?"

"Because you completely humiliated me in front of everyone!" she angrily responded. "I appreciate you supporting me all this time, but you were out of line earlier. Listen, I really care about Alex. And you're my best friend. Why can't you be happy for me?"

"You can do better than him, April," Jackson insisted. "And he's not the most trustworthy guy I know."

"To you, of course. But he's different when we're together," she argued. "I can tell he cares about me too. He proved that last night when we-"

"Oh, don't say it," he cut her off, shaking his head in disgust.

April threw her arms up in frustration. "It's sex, Jackson! You know sex? What you and Lexie seem to engage in practically every day in every room of this house?" she sneered. "And don't you dare throw some double standard argument towards me about this. I had sex once. Okay, maybe twice. And I loved it! I love sex!"

She stormed out of the room to find Lexie standing nearby pretending she hadn't been eavesdropping. The third year resident was prepared to say something, but April raised her hand to stop her. "Don't even say it."

Jackson peeked his head out and watched his best friend walk upstairs. "I'm sorry, alright? Just don't let me catch you again," he called out. His girlfriend slapped his shoulder hard, making him wince. "What was that for?"

"You're being an ass," she bluntly said. "Give her a break."

"I want to, but you know why I'm having a hard time doing it," he bitterly replied. "I'll back off a bit. Doesn't mean I'll be the same way with Karev."

* * *

"So how good is she?" Cristina inquisitively asked while she poured sugar into her coffee. She and Alex were in one of the residents lounge and she didn't hesitate to interrogate her friend about his sexual experience with the Virgin Mary after Meredith had told her what happened that morning. Taking a seat beside him on the couch, she mischievously grinned at him. "Or better yet, on a scale from one to ten, how loud is Kepner?"

He side-eyed the Asian doctor as he kicked his legs up on top of the coffee table. "None of your freaking business. And she wasn't a screaming banshee or anything."

"What else happened? Did she cry tears of joy afterwards or did you cry because you finally got laid again?" she teased, snickering at her own joke. He simply huffed and folded his arms. "You did, huh? That must have been something."

"I didn't cry, dumbass," Alex retorted. "She didn't either. Stop trying to make our sex into some cheesy romance novel. It was far from that."

She sipped her coffee before she responded. "So, what happened? Did April show you a diagram of which positions she wanted to try? She does seem like the type of person who would do research before doing the dirty deed."

"No."

"Did she start speaking another language and her eyes rolled back?"

"It was sex! Not a demonic possession!" He snatched a pillow and held it up. "I'm two seconds away from smothering you with this right now."

Cristina loved heckling Alex whenever she had the opportunity. Their banter was how they bonded, but she especially enjoyed it when she knew he was about to explode soon. "I have a feeling she has a Jekyll and Hyde act in that perky ray of sunshine," she speculated. "I can see her as this sex demon who dominates you and calls you filthy names, but you surprisingly like it. Is she a slapper?"

"She's phenomenal!" he hoarsely snapped, his face inches away from hers. "Not kinky, not a freak on a leash. Will you shut up now?"

"Phenomenal, huh?" She smirked after he retreated to his original sitting position. "Did she know what she was doing?"

Alex smiled to himself as he remembered how confident April was following the first few minutes. "Uhh… she likes being on top," he murmured, sharing a laugh with Cristina. "And she's pretty damn flexible."

"Okay, I don't need to know every detail," she scoffed. "I'd like to keep my sanity."

"You're the weirdo who kept asking me all of these stupid questions about last night," he accusingly said. "Why the hell do you want to know how good she is anyway? You never gave a crap about sex with the past women I slept with."

"Those women weren't virgins like your current girlfriend. I'm intrigued by whatever April's hidden talents are."

He softly chuckled. "Screw you. I'm not telling you a thing."

Cristina stared at the smile on her friend's face. "You look happy. It's almost terrifying," she jokingly mentioned. "Evil Spawn found happiness in April Kepner. Who woulda thought? Her happy ovaries and your… grumpy sperms."

Alex slightly scowled back at her. "We used condoms." He shrugged his shoulders. "Whatever. I'm happy. Big whoop. I've already started counting down to doomsday. Pretty soon she'll go crazy, get hit by a car or spontaneously combust."

"Are you in looove yet?" she playfully asked, grinning when he muttered curse words. Cristina smiled gleefully when April entered the lounge. She waved at the redhead. "Hey, Apes."

"Umm… hey," April reluctantly replied. Her coworker stood up, slowly walking past her as she scanned her from top to bottom before leaving the couple alone. She scrunched her nose at Alex. "Was she checking me out?"

"No. She… she just wanted to see if there was a difference in how you look post-sex."

"Some nurse gave me a high-five for losing my virginity, while another one wished me good luck," she unenthusiastically stated. "I don't want to know how many of the women who work here have slept with you. I have a feeling I will only be incredibly turned off."

Alex patted the empty space beside him on the couch. His girlfriend took a seat next to him and snuggled against his side. "They're nobody, okay? They don't matter to me anymore," he assured her, wrapping his arm over her shoulder. "And uhh, if anybody tries to tell you crap, don't listen to them."

"You mean like when I told people you had chlamydia?" April sheepishly asked.

"I'll let that slide now. Unless, _you_ end up giving me chlamydia," he implied. She nudged his side and laughed. "You're the cleanest person I know. The chances of me knocking you up is probably higher than you giving me an STD."

She glanced up at him with wide eyes. "I should go on the pill, huh?"

"If that's what you want to do," Alex nonchalantly replied. "It was just a joke. Don't take it seriously."

"But… it could happen, you know? An accidental knock up."

"Don't worry about that. If it does, it does. We'd raise the kid together."

April raised her eyebrow at Alex. "Really? Y-you wouldn't ditch me and act like it wasn't yours?" She forced herself to laugh. "Even though it would be obvious it's yours since you're the only man I've slept with."

"I may be a jerk sometimes, but I take responsibility for my crap."

She smiled and kissed his cheek. "See? Jackson needs to calm down and quit butting his way into our relationship. We're fine, right? No reason to be so pissy over it."

"Exactly. Screw Avery- figuratively, not literally." Alex smugly grinned at April. "When are we having sex again?"

She rolled her eyes with a smirk on her face. "Shush."

* * *

**Finally ;) Let me know what you think please!**


	11. Who's the Boss?

**Thanks for the reviews! And sorry for the wait :) This chapter is based on 7x22**

**Enjoy!**

* * *

Trying to figure out what was going on inside of Alex's head sometimes felt like a daunting task for April. While she understood he wasn't the type of person to open up easily, she hoped their relationship could become stronger if they were able to be honest with each other more often. She spent more time rambling about herself and her family than he ever did. He knew about her parents, her sisters, her hometown – whereas, she only knew bits and pieces of his family. The only information she was aware of came from his random confession about his schizophrenic mother and brother.

In the past few weeks, there had been growing tension between her boyfriend and Meredith. Alex seemed to be holding some sort of grudge against their roommate, like he knew something that nobody else did. April had been quietly observing the little interactions they had between each other, but she couldn't pinpoint what the problem was. Meredith carried on like nothing was wrong, while he always sported the infamous Karev scowl when they were in the same room.

As much as April wanted to interrogate him, she was positive he wouldn't break. At least _their_ relationship wasn't rocky. In fact, it was the exact opposite. They continued to bicker, but it became more playful than mean spirited between them. And for the most part, their banter led to sex. Of course, Alex never complained about that.

Sex was the key to getting through to him, she thought. Since they started having sex, he spent his nights sleeping in her bedroom. However for one particular night, he came home drunk and opted to crash in his own bedroom because it was closer to the stairs. He had passed out in his street clothes, so the following morning, April decided to sneak inside and wake him up her own way.

First, his jacket wound up on the floor. Then, his shirt. Both times he hadn't woken up from her movements – until her hands unbuttoned his jeans. He surprised her by suddenly grabbing a hold of her wrist, making her yelp.

"What are you doing?" he mumbled, opening one eye with a smirk on his face.

"I… umm… good morning," the redhead sheepishly greeted him, sitting up on her knees as she bit down on her lower lip. "I thought we could start off the morning differently. You know, with… sex?"

Morning sex. They never engaged in morning sex after that awkward moment with the entire house following her first time. She normally used her mornings to prepare for work and cook breakfast for everybody. This time, she purposely woke up earlier just to squeeze in time with her boyfriend, despite his hungover condition.

Alex softly chuckled as he sat up on his bed. "I like morning sex."

Before he could lean in to kiss her, April shoved a breath mint into his mouth. "You reek of booze, sorry," she stated, scrunching her nose.

"I should've freaking known that was coming," he scoffed, pinning her down onto her back.

She made sure to do certain things to him that drove him crazy. In the back of her mind, she couldn't believe she used sex on him just so he would be honest with her. It felt a little sleazy, yet she didn't think she should feel too bad. They were dating after all and she _was_ allowed to please him.

He smugly grinned, panting heavily as she climbed off of him and snuggled against his side. "Sometimes I question your innocence," the fourth year resident jokingly said. His girlfriend was sweet and innocent on the outside, but there was a wild woman hiding underneath all of that perkiness. "You are… _dude_."

"I am not a dude, Alex," she playfully retorted. Her work wasn't over yet. She needed to soften him up even more, so she went for one of his secret weak spots – the earlobe. "Aren't you glad I woke you up this morning?"

"When you're doing _that_…" He groaned when her hand slowly traveled past his chest and down to his abdomen. The combination of her mouth nibbling on his earlobe and her hand teasing him below forced him to resist his urges. "I still gotta take a shower before we leave for work. I wanna claim it before Avery or Lexie or both do."

"I know, but just relax for a minute," she instructed, placing soft kisses along his neck. "So, is everything alright with you?"

Alex took April's hand and held it against his chest. Her teasing had become almost unbearable. "I'd say I'm feeling pretty damn good right now," he answered with a smile. "You're here."

"Actually, what I meant was, is there anything bothering you? Like, do you want to talk about anything?" she curiously asked. "I promise it'll only be between you and me."

He furrowed his brow as his eyes shifted towards her. "Uhh… no. Why are you asking me that?"

"Because I've been watching you these past couple of weeks and something seems off between you and Meredith," she implied, lifting her head to look at him.

Crap. As if he wanted to tell her about how he found out their friend tampered with Shepherd's clinical trial. Alex already felt horrible that he blurted it out to Hunt the previous night at Joe's. There was a high possibility he screwed over his most reliable friend. And it was all because he was selfish and wanted Chief Resident all to himself.

Once again, the ass in him made a mistake, but he refused to tell April what he had done. He knew she would give him a much deserved lecture over how terrible he was for doing what he did. Right now, she was his most loyal support system. He couldn't lose her over this. Unfortunately, he was certain everyone would eventually find out. Owen would likely report the news to Webber.

"You're delusional," he dismissively said, climbing out of bed and slipping on his boxers.

"I am not. You barely talk to her lately and when you do you're in a bad mood," she noted, sitting up on the bed. "I grew up with three sisters and there were moments when one sister wouldn't talk to the other for whatever reason. You two are acting like them. Just tell me what's wrong, Alex."

"Nothing's wrong, alright?" he snapped in frustration. "I'm gonna take a shower."

April fell back onto the bed, slapping her forehead after Alex left the bedroom. Now she was positive he was hiding a secret from her. Sex couldn't get him to confess, so it must be juicy.

* * *

"Somebody had a lively morning," Lexie mischievously hinted after she arrived at the nurses' station. She laughed when April pretended she hadn't heard her comment. "Oh, don't be shy, April. We're all adults here. We've all experienced morning sex at some point."

Jackson pursed his lips, eying his girlfriend. Anything related to his best friend, Alex and sex continued to disgust him. "Let's not talk about that. I'm sure she doesn't want to talk about it either."

"Thank you," the redhead acknowledged.

"Huh, if Lexie overheard you, then you must be a screamer," Cristina teased and laughed to herself. "I knew it."

April slammed her pen down against the counter and sighed in annoyance. "I'm not a screamer and we are not going to talk about my sex life in the workplace," she scolded her coworkers. Since her failed plan, she had been slightly irritated because Alex ignored her during the drive to the hospital. "This isn't gossip hour, okay?"

Her boyfriend arrived at the nurses' station, though he didn't greet any of them. He immediately grabbed a chart from a nurse and started checking its notes. Soon after, Meredith joined them appearing furious as she approached Alex.

"So they're probably gonna fire me. Are you happy?" she sternly said, drawing the attention of their peers.

"Oh, c'mon. They're not gonna-"

"I want your crap out of my house by the end of the day," Meredith interrupted him and quickly walked away.

April stared at Alex with a raised eyebrow. Things suddenly became even more ambiguous after Meredith apparently kicked him out of the frat house. Clearly, he had done something significantly bad if she couldn't stand the sight of him. He didn't look very proud of it either.

"What the hell was that?" Cristina inquired.

Before the residents could get an answer from Alex, all of their pagers rang simultaneously. Webber had paged everybody to meet in the lobby for an unspecified reason, but it was urgent. Everyone dropped whatever they were doing and headed out.

April walked alongside Alex, lightly yanking on his arm. "What did you do?" she whispered. He remained silent, refusing to look back at her. "I'm serious. What did you do, Alex? Why does Mer think she's getting fired?"

"Dammit, not now," he muttered. "Can we do this later?"

"Why do I get this feeling you won't want to talk later?"

"How about you shut up for a minute and stop asking me so many freaking questions?" he harshly replied, speeding up his strides to pull ahead of her.

He wasn't afraid of telling her the truth, rather it was the fear of his girlfriend turning her back on him that prevented him from talking to her. The fact that he sold out one of his colleagues wasn't going to sit well with his friends. April was the type who would nag him to death about it too.

The page from Webber turned out to be a crucial one. He announced to the staff that a 757 airplane that contained over two hundred passengers crashed in Puget Sound. Being the Level I trauma center in Seattle, the hospital was about to become chaotic with concerned family members flooding in for information and injured victims coming through the ER. It was all hands on deck, which was a perfect opportunity to keep Alex distracted from worrying about his blunder.

Deep shit. Maybe his troubles were deeper than that. He hated himself at that moment. Somehow, he always found a way to ruin somebody's happiness or his own. He wanted to kick his own ass for doing so.

While doctors and nurses began prepping the pit and discharging patients to other hospitals, Alex started stocking up on supplies. Cristina eventually joined him, but she appeared to be unhappy with him. He dreaded her reaction more than April's. They quietly gathered supplies until she broke the silence.

"You know, she's the only one who ever gave a rat's ass about you and now, you might have destroyed her career," she pointed out, referring to Meredith. "Consider yourself lucky that Kepner's been good to you because if you didn't have her, you would have nobody right now. In fact, maybe she won't think so highly of you after she finds out what you've done."

Alex pouted as Cristina walked out of the supply closet. If he didn't fix his crap now, it would be too late to try later. He rushed out of the supply closet searching for Hunt. The trauma surgeon was by the nurses' station and he practically ran towards him.

"Dr. Hunt!" he called out. "I had way too many drinks before I told you that. I didn't mean-"

"Not now, Karev," Hunt ordered.

"Look, I told you that because I didn't think she should be Chief Resident not that she should be fired."

"If you didn't think this through, then you're as dumb as she is," he bluntly said.

As Owen walked away from him, Alex frowned. He lost the respect of one attending, but he probably wouldn't be the last. The entire day officially sucked and he had nobody to blame but himself for it.

* * *

Waiting for patients to arrive in the ER took longer than any of them had expected. The airplane crashed in the water, so they assumed the victims were being triaged by the waterfront before being sent to the hospital via ambulance. With the pit eerily quiet and empty, the doctors were mainly sitting around and trying to pass the time. Some read magazines, others played games on their cell phones and the rest were doing whatever they could to make it appear as if they were actually doing something.

April had prepared the blankets, heated lamps and heated IV fluids for patients who arrived with hypothermia, but she was quickly left with doing nothing again. Sitting on one of the hospital beds was Alex, who used his free time throwing cards into a bedpan. She decided it was time to talk whether he wanted to or not. The angry Karev treatment wasn't going to faze her anymore.

Taking a seat across from him on the bed, she took the deck of cards out of his hand and set them aside. "Are you going to talk to me now?" the redhead calmly questioned. "Well, even if you act like you can't tell me what's happening, I'll just keep talking because we're in the middle of a waiting game at the moment, so there's nothing else to do."

"You won't stop until I tell you, huh?" Alex agitatedly replied.

"I'm your girlfriend and I'm allowed to know what's going on with you," she insisted. "I know you hate opening up to people, but this is how we grow as a couple, you know? We communicate. That's important in a relationship. And umm… how am I supposed to help if you won't tell me what's wrong?"

"Trust me. You can't help me with this crap," he murmured. "Sex won't help either, so don't even think about it."

April rolled her eyes. "At a serious time like this, sex is the last thing on my mind. I'm going to find out eventually, maybe from someone who doesn't know the whole story, so I might as well hear it from you." She sighed when he remained unresponsive. "You can't keep shutting me out whenever you feel like it. That's not fair."

"Why do you have to care so much?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

He gestured his hand towards her. "You care too much. You treat me like a guy who deserves to be pampered or whatever. I don't deserve it. I'm an idiot who probably ruined my friend's career because of my stupid, big mouth."

"Would you prefer if I didn't care about you at all?" she asked, folding her arms. "I'm not sure if you're trying to push me away or you're being your usual pissy self. I can't read your mind, Alex."

"Dude, I can't tell you what happened because Mer and Yang already hate me. Hunt thinks I'm a moron and I don't need you thinking I'm the worst person in the world too. You're all I got and nobody will have my back if you turn on me too," he dejectedly stated. "Finally have something good going for me again and I don't wanna lose that."

April grabbed a hold of Alex's hand and gently squeezed it. "Just tell me what you did."

Taking a deep breath, he exhaled slowly and leaned forward. "I told Hunt that Meredith tampered with Shepherd's Alzheimer's trial," he whispered. "His trial is screwed because of me."

"Alex," she softly gasped, staring at him with her mouth dropped open. "Why did you do that?"

"I wanted to be Chief Resident, but I was drunk when I blurted it out," he explained. "Now Webber's doing an investigation and he wants a fully detailed report from me, but I don't know everything. All I know is Mer switched a placebo with the drug, so it completely invalidates the trial."

She gazed down at their hands. "That was a really stupid thing to do."

"You think I'm scum too, huh?" he angrily questioned.

"No, but what you did could cost Meredith's job. You wanted Chief Resident so bad that you threw your own friend under the bus for it?" She pointed at herself. "What if I was in her shoes? Would you have done the same thing to me?"

"Of course not. I deserve it more than you do, though. All you did was make a dumb checklist, while I brought in sick kids from Africa," he brusquely stated. Alex groaned when April frowned at him. "Look, I didn't mean that you don't deserve it at all-"

"I'm gonna go see if Hunt needs me to do anything else," she interrupted, sliding off of the bed and walking away.

Realizing he had just pissed off another person – the last person he wanted to upset – Alex hopped off of the bed in frustration and decided to leave the ER for a while. Nobody from the plane crash had been reported to be on their way yet, so he might as well be a useful jerk by sending a report to Webber about the clinical trial.

* * *

The emergency room remained nearly empty for another hour. With over a hundred concerned family members waiting for news of their loved in the cafeteria, the surgeons reached the realization that nobody survived the plane crash. Each of them were required to break the bad news to those families. It was going to be an awful day for a lot of people.

But the depressing mood temporarily changed for one person. After the doctors were given instructions for how to speak to each grieving family, Owen finally posted the announcement for the next Chief Resident. Everybody expected the role to be rewarded to Alex or Meredith, but it was neither of them.

Front and center on the bulletin board, the new Chief Resident was: April Kepner, M.D.

April's eyes grew wide as she brightly smiled at the sight of her name. Nobody had been very supportive of her chances of becoming Chief Resident. Even her own boyfriend doubted it. She was now in charge of her fellow residents. In a way, she would somewhat be their boss. Not to mention, the promotion would look good on her résumé for potential fellowships. However, not one person bothered to congratulate her.

Meredith rolled her eyes at the announcement, while Alex was visibly annoyed by the trauma surgeon's decision. He was certain he would have gotten the role. Instead, it went to his girlfriend. He was _not_ looking forward to listening to her bark orders at him. As much as he cared for her, he hated the idea of being below the redhead.

"Dr. Hunt," he called out as he chased after Owen in the hallway. "You gave Chief Resident to Kepner? It was supposed to be me or Grey. You think anyone's gonna listen to Kepner? Hell, even I don't want to and she's my girlfriend. It's gonna be complete chaos."

"You think anyone's gonna listen to _you_?" Hunt retorted. "You just sold out the one universally liked individual at this hospital. Everyone's gonna hate you. Chief Resident's supposed to manage their peers, be a resource and a support. After what you did, you think anyone is gonna come to you for anything? I was planning to give it to you, but now…"

The trauma surgeon couldn't finish his sentence as he walked away from Alex. He should have known he screwed himself out of the Chief Resident role after turning in Meredith. Neither of them had gotten it in the end, yet he couldn't find the decency in him to congratulate April for landing the job. He promised her special treatment if he had won the role, but he fully expected her to follow the rules and treat everyone fairly.

Freakin' A. The not so great perks of dating a goody two shoes.

* * *

The day was almost over and April felt emotionally spent after going through her list of families she was required to talk to. Having to watch them break down and cry for their loved ones was difficult because she needed to be their temporary support system. The compassionate side of her simply wanted to cry along with them. As someone who was very close to her family, she couldn't imagine the pain and suffering she would have to go through if her parents and sisters had been on that plane. She tried not to think about that at all.

But there was one glimmer of hope when they thought all was lost. One survivor, an unaccompanied minor. She was awake and stable when she arrived in the ER, so there was a sense of relief for the surgeons involved.

There wasn't much left for April to do except find something to pass the time with until her shift was over. Alex had been busy avoiding her throughout the day, which was discouraging for her. It felt like a million questions ran through her head. Would he still want to be with her? Would he even listen to her order him around? Was becoming Chief Resident the worst thing to happen to their relationship?

All she wanted to do was talk to him, but he seemed uninterested in even looking at her. Despite calling her parents and texting her sisters about becoming Chief Resident, the redhead didn't feel completely satisfied about it mainly because she couldn't celebrate with them. Tonight would be just her, a bowl of popcorn and a chick flick, she thought.

"April," Jackson called out after he spotted her walking down a hallway. He grinned at his best friend while he approached her. "Chief freakin' Resident. How does it feel?"

"Not as great as I thought it would be," she muttered, pointing at her dejected facial expression. "Do I look excited?"

He pulled out a bag of unopened potato chips from his lab coat pocket. "Would this make you feel better?"

"Potato chips?" she skeptically replied.

"Not just potato chips but sour cream and onion. You love this," the pretty boy noted, playfully waving the bag in front of her. He rolled his eyes after she blankly stared back at him. "It's a small congratulatory gift for you. I'm sorry I couldn't get you anything better, but we've all been busy today. I want to buy you drinks at Joe's to celebrate. You, me and Lexie. How does that sound?"

"Aren't you forgetting someone?"

Jackson pursed his lips, his eyes glancing up at the ceiling. "I'm not sure Meredith's in the celebrating mood."

April smacked his stomach with the back of her hand. "Don't be an ass. I am not celebrating at Joe's and purposely leaving out Alex. He may be mad at me right now for whatever reason, but he's still my boyfriend."

"What? What is he mad about?"

"You know, I'm not even sure right now. He's Alex. He's always mad about something," she answered, sighing in frustration. "The whole thing with Mer and me getting Chief Resident instead of him… he doesn't want to be around me. He's avoiding me and it sucks, so it's difficult for me to be happy about this when the guy who's supposed to care about me isn't."

"Well, maybe you should forget about him tonight and come out with Lexie and I," he suggested with a smile. "Don't let his bad mood ruin your glory. You're Chief Resident, April. That's a big deal. You should be smiling. In fact, give me your brightest smile right now."

April offered a half-smile and pointed at herself. "Is this okay?" she unenthusiastically replied.

"C'mon, April…"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I want to be happy about this. I really, really do, but Alex… he's constantly on my mind," she admitted, biting down on her bottom lip. "As much of an ass he is at times, there's still that good guy in him. And when he's upset like this, I can't help but be bummed too. I think I… umm…"

"You think you… what?" Jackson asked curiously.

She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Looking down at her shoes, she nervously said, "I think I love him."

He slightly scrunched his face in disgust. "That's… interesting. Are you sure you love him? I mean, you're not actually in love with a certain something attached to Karev's body?"

"How much longer are you gonna do this?" she irritably questioned. "I've been happy with Alex. We normally enjoy each other's company, which I know is a surprise to a lot of people. He's actually really funny when we're alone. Like I've said time and time again, he's a good person. And I love him."

Jackson placed his hand on April's shoulder. "Okay, I'm sorry for always talking crap about him. He hasn't exactly treated you like crap, which is a first. Of course I want you to be happy, so if he's the guy who makes you feel that way, then I won't get in the way of that." He held up the potato chips, giving her the puppy lip. "Will you still accept this gift and come to Joe's with me?"

She smirked as she grabbed the bag from him. "You're lucky we're friends."

Wrapping his arm around her shoulder, Jackson led her down the hallway. He smiled when she rested her head against his own shoulder. "By the way, I'm proud of you."

"Thank you," she happily responded. "It's nice to know somebody is."

* * *

Sitting alone at the bar at Joe's, Alex quietly sipped his beer as he tried to erase the entire day from his memory. Bags of his clothes and other belongings were piled on the floor by his seat. He wasn't sure where he would be staying for the night after Meredith kicked him out of the frat house. Although he played a role in his roommate winning custody of baby Zola, one of the children he flew in from Africa that Derek and Meredith decided to adopt, they still weren't on friendly speaking terms.

And losing out on Chief Resident stung too. Why couldn't he just be freaking happy for his girlfriend? Perhaps it was because he had been overly confident about being the top dog in their residency class. He also knew the job was his to lose after Hunt admitted he was the original first choice. That stung even more.

The bell above the door rang when more visitors arrived for drinks. Jackson entered first, followed by Lexie and April. On their way to a booth, the redhead stopped in her tracks when she noticed Alex in the bar as well. He briefly made eye contact with her before he turned away to drink more beer.

She didn't hesitate to approach him since it was the first time in hours they had seen each other. "Alex, want to sit with us? We're umm… well, Jackson wanted to buy me drinks for becoming Chief Resident-"

"No," he immediately answered.

"Listen, I know you two rarely see eye to eye, but please sit with us," April pleaded. "For me? I mean, it's a little awkward to be sitting with Jackson and Lexie and I'm by myself. It's been a long day for all of us. I know you've had a rough day, but can't we spend some time together?"

Alex slightly scowled at her. "I don't have a place to live right now and I didn't get Chief Resident, so why would I want to sit around while you rub that in my face?" he sternly replied.

"Rub it in your face? This wasn't my fault, okay?" she retorted. "I can talk to Meredith about changing her mind. I'm sure she'll reconsider if she knows you didn't mean to hurt her."

"You can't fix this! This is my problem not yours, so back off."

She rolled her eyes. "Okay, I get it. You're the big, tough guy who doesn't need help from anybody. Well, you know what? You can't always shut people out because you're pissed off at the world. One of these days you're gonna need someone, but nobody will be there for you since you keep pushing them away. And that includes _me_."

Alex watched her storm off and join their roommates across the room. Avery had ordered shots for the three of them and handed one to April after she sat down. He seemed to be toasting to her new role as Chief Resident. She was all smiles as she clanked her shot glass against Jackson's and Lexie's, and he slightly smiled after his girlfriend grimaced post-shot. He instantly frowned again as he realized what a jerk he was being to her.

All she did was care for him, maybe more than anybody had ever cared for him before. He reverted back to his old ways by building a wall around himself that nobody could break down. With April, he did trust her enough to share his darkest secrets with her – though he had only really done it once. A part of him was afraid she would be extremely turned off by his past and leave him. Too many people had let him down, something she hadn't done to him yet… or maybe never would.

Now he felt too much of a coward to stand up and admit he was wrong. Seeing her trying to pretend to be happy made him feel like a bigger ass. If anything, she did make him happy. He might not always show it, but he felt better around her. It also scared the crap out of him that he was falling in love with her.


End file.
